Environmental regulations and innovation activity in UK manufacturing industries

We examine the relationship between environmental regulations and innovation, using data from UK manufacturing industry during 2000-2006. We estimate a dynamic model of innovation behaviour, and explicitly account for the likely endogeneity of our measure of the stringency of environmental regulations (pollution abatement costs). Our results indicate that while on the one hand environmental R&D and investment in environmental capital are stimulated by greater pollution abatement pressures, on the other hand there is not a positive impact of environmental regulation on total R&D or total capital accumulation. We find some evidence that this is because more stringent environmental regulations directly lower the optimal expenditure on non-environmental innovations. In addition, we find that environmental R&D may crowd out non-environmental R&D, although there is no evidence that environmental capital crowds out non-environmental capital.     

经济结构、技术进步与环境污染——基于中国工业行业数据的分析

文章将环境污染的影响分解为规模效应、结构效应、纯生产技术效应、纯污染治理技术效应、混合技术效应、结构生产技术效应、结构治理技术效应和综合效应,并运用37个工业行业2001-2009年三种主要废气排放数据实证分析了工业经济结构和技术进步对工业废气减排的贡献,得到如下结论:纯生产技术效应、纯污染治理技术效应在减排过程中占据了主导地位;工业经济结构的变化对工业废气减排的作用效果不明显,相对2001年甚至还加剧了环境污染;结构生产技术效应和结构治理技术效应都对废气减排起到了促进作用,环境技术进步在一定程度上弥补了工业结构的不合理。     

Technical Change and Measuring Pollution Abatement Costs: An Activity Analysis Framework

The cornerstones of studies that estimate the effectof environmental regulations on an economy areestimates of the pollution abatement costs incurred bythe manufacturing and electric utility sectors.However, there are concerns regarding the accuracy ofthe surveys used to generate these cost estimates.This paper demonstrates that technical change tends toresult in an increasing share of pollution abatementcosts being impossible to measure. This finding hasimportant implications for estimating the productivityeffects of environmental regulations, developingregulatory budgets, and data collection effortsrelated to environmental accounting.     

Regulating an Externality-Generating Utility Environmental Taxes Under Limited Information

Global warming is currently an important item on most nationalenvironmental agendas. In many countries, coal-fired electricity generatingstations represent an important source of greenhouse gases. We examinehow regulations to curb emissions affect public utility pricing regulationwhen regulators act non-cooperatively. We show that, when there is limitedinformation on fixed abatement costs, an environmental regulator prefersan emission tax over an output tax or a lump sum environmental tax. Thepublic utility regulator prefers the lump sum tax regime.     

Who invests more in advanced abatement technology? Theory and evidence

We study firm investment in abatement technology under a heterogeneous‐firm framework. We find that more‐productive firms make more (less) investment in abatement technology if investment and productivity are complements (substitutes). Under linear demand, firms’ abatement investments exhibit an inverted U‐shape with respect to productivity level. This finding is in contrast to results in existing studies. We also find that in response to tightened environmental regulations, more‐productive firms raise their respective investments in abatement technology, whereas less‐productive firms do the opposite. More‐productive firms have lower pollution emission intensity. The key theoretical predictions are confirmed by empirical tests using Chinese data.     

Static and dynamic efficiency of pollution control strategies

A great deal of the economic literature on pollution control strategies concentrates on the efficiency of environmental policy instruments. Most analytical studies in this field show that market instruments are more efficient with respect to the cost of pollution abatement of a given number of polluters than non-market instruments. According to several analytical studies, market instruments should also be more efficient with respect to innovation in pollution abatement equipment than non-market instruments. In the empirical literature a great number of case studies exist with estimations of the savings of abatement costs of market instruments in a situation without technological progress. Empirical studies about the impact of environmental policy market instruments on the abatement costs in situations with technological progress are lacking.The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap. The paper deals with an empirical estimation of abatement costs for the emission of SO₂ of coal-fired electricity units in the Netherlands from 1985 to 2000. First, the working of market instruments and non-market instruments (the existing environmental policy of the Dutch government) is simulated in a static situation. Second, we analyse the learning effects of flue gas desulphurization. The efficiency advantage of market instruments turns out to be larger in a situation of technological progress than in a static situation.     

Intertemporal Emission Permits Trading Under Uncertainty and Irreversibility

This paper analyzes the effect of emission permit banking on clean technology investment and abatement under conditions where the stringency of the future cap is uncertain. We examine the problem of heterogeneous firms minimizing the cost of intertemporal emission control in the presence of stochastic future pollution standards and emission permits that are tradable across firms and through time. A firm can invest in clean capital (an improved pollution abatement technology) to reduce its abatement cost. We consider two possibilities: that investment is reversible or irreversible. Uncertainty is captured within a two period model: only the current period cap is known. We show that if banking is positive and marginal abatement costs are sufficiently convex, there will be more abatement and investment in clean technology under uncertainty than there would be under certainty and no banking. These results are at odds with the common belief that uncertainty on future environmental policy is a barrier to investment in clean capital. Moreover, under uncertainty and irreversibility, we find that there are cases where banking enables firms to invest more in clean capital.     

UNMASKING THE POLLUTION HAVEN EFFECT*

We use theory and empirics to examine the effect of environmental regulations on trade flows. A simple model demonstrates how unobserved heterogeneity, endogeneity, and aggregation issues bias standard measurements of this relationship. A reduced‐form estimate of the model, using data on U.S. regulations and trade with Canada and Mexico for 130 manufacturing industries from 1977 to 1986, indicates that industries whose abatement costs increased most experienced the largest increases in net imports. For the average industry, the change in net imports we ascribe to regulatory costs amounting to 10% of the total increase in trade volume over the period.     

Rethinking the optimal level of environmental quality: justifications for strict environmental policy

Traditional environmental theory suggests that the optimal level of a pollution emission occurs when the marginal damage created by the emissions is equal to the marginal cost of reducing the emissions. We argue that the benefits from reducing pollution should be much more broadly defined to include at least three other sources of benefits. First, we develop a game-theoretic model in which firms may under-invest in cost-saving ‘green technologies’. Second, we demonstrate that consideration of future damages and abatement costs leads to a lower current optimal pollution level than that obtained in traditional models. Finally, we show that ecological complexity creates indirect pathways by which greater pollution increases the likelihood of generating irreversible environmental damage. This broader definition of the benefits of pollution abatement yields an optimal level of pollution that may actually be less than the level at which conventionally-measured marginal damages are equal to marginal abatement costs. Thus, environmental policy should be stricter.     

Shadow prices, environmental stringency, and international competitiveness

Empirical tests of the relationship between international competitiveness and the severity of environmental regulations are hampered by the lack of pollution abatement cost data for non-U.S. countries. The theory of the firm suggests that environmental stringency can be measured by the difference between a polluting input's shadow price and its market price. We make a first attempt at quantifying such a measure for two industries located in nine European OECD countries. Overall, we provide (i) a new approach to measure cross-country regulatory differences in that we use a theoretically attractive measure of industry-specific private compliance cost, and (ii) empirical estimates that are an attractive tool for researchers and policymakers who are interested in examining how economic activity is influenced by compliance costs.     

Capturing the least costly way of reducing pollution: A shadow price approach

The production analysis literature is increasingly concerned with estimating marginal abatement costs. Yet, most studies do not emphasize the ways in which pollutants may be reduced and their costs, which makes them unable to identify the least costly compliance strategy. This paper utilizes the materials balance principle to relate pollution to the employment of material inputs. A production model which allows input and output substitution, downscaling of operations, pollution control, and emission permits purchases as compliance strategies is proposed, and the implications of joint and non-joint pollution controls for the trade-off between pollutants and desirable outputs are considered. Marginal abatement costs, reflecting the least costly way of compliance, are derived by exploiting the duality between the directional distance function and the profit function.     

Do environment regulations matter for EU-MENA trade?

This study examines the impact of environmental regulations stringency on agricultural trade between European Union (EU) and Middle East and North Africa (MENA countries). Using a gravity model and applying the zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) model, we estimate the impact of environmental regulations stringency on bilateral agricultural exports between 28 EU and 20 MENA countries during the period 2001–2014. The results have showed that environmental regulations do matter for agricultural trade between both regions because in the presence of excessive zero trade observations, they act as significant fixed export costs that affect the probability of trade. More stringent environmental regulations stimulate innovative efforts in cost-saving green technologies, which increase productivity and positively affect agricultural exports. The results have favoured the revisionist Porter hypothesis (PH), according to which environmental regulations may stimulate innovative efforts, which mitigate the negative effects of higher fixed abatement costs and enhance trade competitiveness.     

政企合谋、环境规制与企业全要素生产率*

本文利用中国工业企业数据库和地级市层面的企业治污投资数据构建了一个2003—2007年的面板,实证检验了环境规制对企业全要素生产率的影响以及政企合谋在背后的作用。实证结果表明,用企业治污投资占工业增加值比重衡量的环境规制强度每上升1%,企业当期的生产率下降约1%。当政企合谋可能性上升时,环境规制对企业生产率的边际影响在减弱,说明政企合谋带来的监管放松和处罚不力弱化了环境规制对合谋企业生产率的影响。本文的政策启示在于中央政府应加强环保领域统一执法,破解囚徒困境式的环境规制。同时,本文的发现为环保机构监测监察执法垂直管理制度改革提供了合理性依据。     

A Cournot Mechanism for Pollution Control under Asymmetric Information

The contribution of this paper is to show that a simple nonlinear tax can achieve a long-run socially optimal level of pollution without the regulator knowing marginal abatement costs. Firms are charged their differential contribution to total damages, evaluated at the upper margin of current emissions. This induces a Cournot game in pollution levels. We show that the Nash equilibrium exists, corresponds to the socially optimal long-run output and emission levels and number of firms, is stable, and can be reached by iterative computations where conjectures are formed using a linear estimator based on past emission levels.     

外商直接投资与环境规制关联机制的面板数据分析

利用Panel Data模型和时间序列模型对我国各地区外商直接投资与环境规制之间的关联机制作了实证分析。计量结果显示,环境规制确实对我国各个地区引进外资具有一定影响,而且这种影响呈现为负效应,“污染天堂假说”在一定程度上存在。当然,影响外商直接投资的决定因素主要是地理区位、经济发展水平和市场化进程,而劳动力成本也逐渐成为外商企业投资选址时考虑的因素。该研究结果具有重要的政策含义,即在中国各个地方政府在引进外资时,FDI对当地环境的负面影响需要逐渐引起各级地方政府在环境保护和政策制定过程中一定程度的关注。     

Consequences of the IPPC’s BAT Requirements for Emissions and Abatement Costs: A DEA Analysis on Norwegian Data

The Integrated Pollution and Prevention Control (IPPC) directive from the European Union implies that regulatory emission caps shall be set in accordance with each industry’s Best Available Techniques (BAT). The directive, which represents a harmonization of environmental regulations towards a BAT principle, is currently being implemented in all the EU member states and the states associated with the European Economic Area. The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of this implementation on emission reductions and costs, using data from Norwegian manufacturing industries. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to construct a frontier of all efficient installations. The frontier is based on all installations within an industry that use the Best Practice Technique (BPT). We estimate the changes in emissions due to the implementation of IPPC as the difference between an installation’s actual emissions and the emissions that would occur if it operated on the frontier. The method reveals a strong potential for emission reductions. Further, estimates of short-run abatement costs indicate that considerable emission reductions can be achieved with low or no costs, but that the implementation of a strict BAT principle for all installations involves substantial costs. To the extent that the abatement costs of an installation would be excessive, IPPC includes some limited modifications of the strict BAT principle. It seems important that these modifications are fully utilized by authorities to achieve the most cost efficient implementation of the directive.      

The Timing and Strategic Role of Self-Protection

Self-protection has private goods characteristics as it reduces own exposure to pollution given a certain level of pollution. We study the effect of timing self-protection before, after or simultaneously with abatement. We find that self-protection when timed before abatements has strategic effects. In this case self-protection, shifts the second stage subgame perfect Nash equilibrium of abatements such that own contributions of abatement are decreased and those of the other country are increased. Thereby shifting future abatement costs to the other country. When countries cooperate only on abatement, the incentives to shift future abatement costs are greater. Contrary to, intention, cooperation on abatement may in fact worsen environmental quality if it does not include self-protection.     

Factors Behind the Environmental Kuznets Curve. A Decomposition of the Changes in Air Pollution

The environmental Kuznets curve theory suggeststhat economic growth in the long run may reduceenvironmental problems. In this article, we usea decomposition analysis to isolate eightdifferent factors, in order to investigate theorigins of changes in emissions to air over theperiod from 1980 to 1996. Among these factorsare economic growth, changes in the relativesize of production sectors and changes in theuse of energy. Given constant emissions perproduced unit, economic growth alone would havecontributed to a significant increase in theemissions. This potential degradation of theenvironment has been counteracted by first ofall more efficient use of energy and abatementtechnologies. In addition, the substitution ofcleaner for polluting energy types and othertechnological progressions and politicalactions have reduced the growth in emissions.Consequently, the growth in all emissions hasbeen significantly lower than economic growth,and negative for some pollutants.The results indicate that policymakers mayreduce emissions considerably through creatingincentives for lower energy use andsubstitutions of environmental friendly forenvironmental damaging energy types, inaddition to support environmental friendlyresearch or to conduct direct emission reducingactions, such as abatement requirements orbanning of environmental damaging products.This is particularly relevant to countries andsectors with relatively high energy intensitiesand low pollution abatement.     

Optimal environmental taxation and enforcement policy

We study the optimal environmental taxation and enforcement policy when (i) the regulator does not know the firms’ abatement costs, (ii) penalties for tax evasion are limited, and (iii) monitoring of pollution is costly. We show that the threat of being audited alter the usual firms’ incentives to over-estimate their abatement costs. In particular, depending on the firms’ abatement costs, the optimal policy may involve over or under-deterrence compared to the full information outcome. We then investigate the properties of a pollution standard. We show that this policy comes close to an environmental tax once the economic incentives of the accompanying enforcement policy are considered.     

A dynamic general equilibrium model of pollution abatement under learning by doing

In 2013, Beladi et al. constructed a dynamic general equilibrium model of pollution, and characterized a steady-state equilibrium. In this paper, we extend Beladi et al.’s model to an even more general model in which the pollution abatement costs under learning by doing are taken into account. In our model, the instantaneous abatement costs depend on both the rate of abatement and the experience of using a technology. Our objective is to apply optimal control theory to investigate the dynamic general equilibrium model of pollution abatement, and derive the steady-state equilibrium properties and optimal levels of emission permits and pollution treatment.