Essays on trade, directed technical change and environment

In the last decades the consequences of the economic growth on the ecosystem are evident, and the environmental protection has become a crucial issue not only in natural sciences setting, but especially from an economic and political point of view. Researchers and policymakers focused the attention on the causes of pollution in order to prevent environmental degradation, and on the consequences that economic and political actions may have on the economic growth. This work, through three different essays, attempts to debate the environmental issue in a wide prospective from different points of view. The first one regards the link between international trade and environment. In some cases, researchers agreed with the idea that trade liberalization could lead to an improvement of environmental quality, while Pollution Haven Hypothesis states that environmental regulation induces firms to relocate dirty production where the environmental regulation is less stringent. The first part of this work gives an overview of this branch of literature, explaining some studies that support and contrast these theories. The research question of the second part concerns the international flow of hazardous waste and its drivers. Using a gravity model for trade, the article tries to underlines the role played by the relative levels of policy stringency and the technological specialization across EU-OECD countries and regions. The last part of the present work, tries to analyse the eco-friendly innovation from a different point of view. Considering a long span of time, the essay investigates the effects that income distribution and institutions may have on the generation of environmental related patents.