| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 資源管理研究所 === 84 === Following the establishment of WTO and activation of global and
local environmental protection, the interlinkage between trade
and environment attracts more and more attention in recent
literature. Environment economists are particularly interested
in the impact of freer trade on environmental quality. As a
staple food, rice is one of the most important agricultural
products in Taiwan. Excessive use of chemicals (e.g.,
pesticides and fertilizers) has, however, caused environmental
contamination through various channels. Nation-wide concern is
now focused on whether or not environmental quality will be
worsen and to what extent the degradation will be as a result of
freer trade. Such issues are not only totally ignored by
previous studies, but complicated by the lack of information
about actual application of chemicals and proper measurement of
shadow rent for rice production.This paper intends to develop a
rational expectation model to measure the impact of trade
liberalization on environmental quality in terms of chemical
intensity. With the government intervention in the form of
price support and diversion program taken into account, an
acreage response function was derived under the uncertainty of
production as well as the shadow rent. Chemicals used for rice
production were then estimated by using the concept of hedonic
function and input complements. Land and chemical inputs were
integrated to construct an environmental quality indicator. How
the marginal impact and the elasticity of freer trade on
environmental quality could be measured was also explained and
empirically estimated.The laws of motion of acreage and shadow
rent were estimated by the maximum likelihood method, and so
were the hedonic functions of chemicals. It revealed that the
demands for inputs decrease with the expected shadow rent. More
importantly, freer trade in terms of lower tariff tends to
worsen environmental quality both theoretically and empirically,
and such negative impact increases with freer trade at an
increasing rate. The results imply that more investment on
environmental improvement is warranted as free trade continues.
Economic instruments as well as regulatory measures to chemical
intensity also deserve serious contemplation.
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