Using the University of Gothenberg's Quality of Government (QoG) Dataset, I wanted to draw some comparisons between the data available for metrics of international trade and pollution, and compare my findings to what is suggested by current research on the subject.
In the articles I had read on the matter, international trade and pollution should be positively correlated. In other words, the more a country conducts trade with other countries, the more polluted it should be. However, the varied metrics I used to operationally define pollution and international trade showed that the variables tended to be negatively correlated, or have weak/non-existent correlations. I concluded that further research into more specific areas of pollution was necessary to explain my findings fully.
The visualizations I created for this project are available to view in .html format. As some of the graphs I made are interactable, GitHub cannot properly display them, nor can one use them. To view the vizualizations, please download the .html file and view it in your browser. The jupyter notebook I have for this repository can be used to reproduce my code.
- Editor Used: Jupyter Notebook
- Python Version: Python 3.11.5
Dahlberg, Stefan, Aksel Sundström, Sören Holmberg, Bo Rothstein, Natalia Alvarado Pachon, Cem Mert Dalli, Rafael Lopez Valverde & Paula Nilsson. 2024. The Quality of Government Basic Dataset, version Jan24. University of Gothenburg: The Quality of Government Institute, https://www.gu.se/en/quality-government doi:10.18157/qogbasjan24
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. 2023, June 12. How does trade contribute to climate change and how can it advance climate action?. London School of Economics and Political Science. https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/explainers/how-does-trade-contribute-to-climate-change-and-how-can-it-advance-climate-action/
Povitkina, Marina, Natalia Alvarado Pachon & Cem Mert Dalli. 2021. The Quality of Government Environmental Indicators Dataset, version Sep21. University of Gothenburg: The Quality of Government Institute, https://www.gu.se/en/quality-government
Zhong, R., Chen, A., Zhao, D., Mao, G., Zhao, X., Huang, H., & Liu, J. (2023). Impact of international trade on water scarcity: An assessment by improving the Falkenmark indicator. Journal of Cleaner Production, 385, 135740. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.135740