What is the potential impact of a taxation system reform on carbon abatement and industrial growth in China?

Economists have long argued that market-based environmental policy such as an environmental tax is beneficial to abate pollution emissions. This study aims at investigating the impact of carbon tax levy on carbon dioxide (CO₂) abatement and industrial growth in China. To this end, the marginal abatement cost (MAC) of industrial CO₂ emissions is estimated as the benchmark of setting the carbon tax rate by using the directional distance function (DDF). This paper employs the polynomial dynamic panel model to forecast the impact of carbon tax levy on target variables such as sectoral value-added and CO₂ intensity. The results reveal that the levy of a CO₂ tax has a negative impact on industrial output only in the short term. In the long term, the impact of CO₂ tax levy on output will become positive. The levy of a CO₂ tax is always beneficial to reduce CO₂ intensity. Corresponding policy suggestions for an environmental taxation system reform are given in the concluding section.     

Efficiency evaluation of Chinese regional industrial systems using a dynamic two-stage DEA approach

Industrial air pollution control recently becomes a major policy issue in China. Performnce evaluation can examine policy effectiveness and provide decesion support for industrial development. A regional industrial system in China contains production and abatement stages. Within this structure, the capacity of industrial waste gas treatment can be treated as a carry-over variable. More precisely, it is a desirable output of the abatement stage in the previous period but an input to the abatement stage in the current period. Using this framework, this study establishes a dynamic two-stage data envelopment analysis model to explore the efficiencies of regional industrial systems in China. This model provides measures of the overall, period, stage, and period stage efficiencies. Based on empirical data from 2007 to 2015, it is concluded that (1) the carry-over variable capacity of industrial waste gas treatment has significant influences on the operational efficiency scores of regional industrial systems, especially in the abatement stage; (2) there exist distinct geographic characteristics of inefficiencies in the regional industrial systems; (3) the average period efficiency of the abatement stage was lower than that of the production stage during China's 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006–2010); however, the reverse happens during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011–2015); and 4) industrial structure and economic development level are the key influencing factors of regional industrial efficiencies. This study entails important implications for policy makers in terms of industrial waste gas treatment and revelant contextual factors.     

TAX REVENUE-FINANCED PUBLIC ABATEMENT AND WELFARE: A CONSUMPTION TAX CASE

This paper develops a model of public abatement financed either by a pollution tax or by a consumption tax. It shows that consumption tax revenue-financed public abatement raises welfare more than pollution tax revenue-financed public abatement does when the pollution tax rate rises. This result is worthwhile for environmental protection policy makers when they are determining the revenue source of public abatement.     

中国工业环境全要素生产率的来源分解——基于要素投入与污染治理的分析

本文将基于松弛的效率损失测度法与卢恩伯格生产率指数相结合,通过将工业环境全要素生产率指数按照投入要素与产出进行分解,测算中国工业环境全要素生产率的来源。结果发现,2001～2007年中国工业环境全要素生产率有所提高,但受国际金融危机的影响,在2008年下降;工业环境全要素生产率的来源表明,加强污染治理可以有效提升工业环境全要素生产率;投入生产率的来源表明,劳动生产技术的进步是提高工业环境全要素生产率的有效措施;污染治理生产率的来源表明,优先加强COD治理能更有效提升工业环境全要素生产率。     

State-imposed solutions to negative externalities: employment impact of pollution abatement policy

Musgrave was acutely aware that many private activities, both consumption and production, generate negative externalities. Advocates for an active government rely on this concept to justify public sector regulation of private activities. Regulations and mandates, along with penalties for non-compliance, are the primary instruments used by government to bring about the “correct” level of output whenever private output gives rise to negative externalities such as environmental pollution. This study in effect offers a case study of the Clean Air Act on employment, i.e., it empirically investigates whether pollution abatement costs have had a negative impact on manufacturing employment in the U.S. Conventional microeconomic theory suggests that there is a trade-off between environmental protection outlays and manufacturing activity, i.e., higher pollution abatement compliance costs borne by industries may contribute to plant shutdowns, lower production levels and lay-offs, and/or lack of investment, thereby leading to diminished manufacturing employment. Existing studies fail to offer a clear conclusion as to the impact of existing environmental protection measures on manufacturing activity. Using state-level data for 2001, this study finds that government-imposed pollution abatement costs have had a statistically significant negative impact on manufacturing employment in the U.S. Richard J. Cebula, Shirley and Philip Solomons Eminent Scholar.     

Optimal plant location and air quality management under indivisibilities and economies of scale

The implications of indivisibilities and economies of scale on the optimal location of industrial plants and on the optimal choice of their pollution abatement technologies under given air quality standards are examined. Various optimization models, accounting for abatement, land development and plant relocation costs, as well as for locational economies of scale, are developed, using the integer and mixed-integer linear programming framework. A method for computing taxes and subsidies leading the system to the optimal pattern of decisions under decentralized decision-making is proposed. Finally, an application of the approach with real data of the Haifa region is implemented, illustrating the utility of the approach for environmental management.     

Land use dynamics and the environment

This paper builds a benchmark framework to study optimal land use, encompassing land use activities and environmental degradation. We focus on the spatial externalities of land use as drivers of spatial patterns: land is immobile by nature, but local actions affect the whole space since pollution flows across locations resulting in both local and global damages. We prove that the decision maker problem has a solution, and characterize the corresponding social optimum trajectories by means of the Pontryagin conditions. We also show that the existence and uniqueness of time-invariant solutions are not in general guaranteed. Finally, a global dynamic algorithm is proposed in order to illustrate the spatial-dynamic richness of the model. We find that our simple set-up already reproduces a great variety of spatial patterns related to the interaction between land use activities and the environment. In particular, abatement technology turns out to play a central role as pollution stabilizer, allowing the economy to reach a time-invariant equilibrium that can be spatially heterogeneous.     

TRADE LIBERALIZATION, PUBLIC ABATEMENT, AND WELFARE

This paper discusses public abatement financed by pollution tax revenue or tariff revenue and investigates the welfare consequences of a tariff. The main result of this paper is that under certain conditions a tariff reduction results in an improvement in welfare through an increase in public abatement and a decrease in pollution. This result may guide policy for countries that wish to harmonize trade liberalization and the environmental protection demonstrated by both the private and the public sectors.     

The effect of environmental regulation on environmental innovation

Environmental expenditure estimates resulting from US environmental policy are based on current technology which may overstate policy's true costs. Existing evidence shows that ex ante cost estimates are greater than realized costs due to unexpected technological progress. This research programme asks whether innovation is a response to environmental regulation or whether the true regulatory compliance costs are overestimated ex ante when technological advancement is ignored? The author conducts an empirical study of the US manufacturing industry's environmental patent activities and environmental regulation as measured by pollution abatement and control expenditure (PACE) data. She finds a statistically significant positive relationship between environmental regulation and innovation when estimated by ordinary least squares (OLS). However, the OLS coefficient of pollution abatement costs is inconsistent because of a correlation between the explanatory variable and unobservable variables. Two-staged least squares addresses the inconsistency problem, resulting in positive and significant PACE coefficients. Thus, there is evidence that innovation is a response to environmental regulation. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Does competition prevent industrial pollution? Evidence from a panel threshold model

The objective of this paper is to assess the impact of competition on industrial toxic pollution by using, for the first time, a panel threshold model which allows evaluations of the main drivers of toxic releases under two different market regimes. The empirical analysis is based on a micro‐level panel dataset over the five‐year period 1987–2012. We show that this relationship is statistically significant and robust above and below the threshold, even after accounting for alternative specifications of market concentration. Specifically, we unmask an inverted V‐shaped relationship between market concentration and industrial pollution. We argue that the increasing non‐parametric regression line up to a certain concentration (threshold) level indicates a negative effect on facilities' emissions levels, whereas a decreasing line indicates a positive effect. This relationship provides new insights into environmental policy design towards abatement of industrial releases and sustainability. Finally, our empirical model remains robust under different specifications properly accounted for possible endogeneity.     

Environmental taxes in a differentiated mixed duopoly

Beladi and Chao (2006) and Bárcena-Ruiz and Garzón (2006) considered the role of environmental policy on the decision whether to privatize a public firm in different market structures. This paper re-examines whether privatization improves (or deteriorates) the environment in a mixed duopolistic framework with differentiated product and pollution abatement. It is shown that, due to privatization, less attention is paid to pollution abatement by all the firms coupled with less environment taxes levied by the government in a differentiated duopoly, and the environment is more (less) damaged when the product is less (more) substitutable. When the product is highly substitutable, industry profits increase because this softens the intensity of the product market, but social welfare deteriorates accompanied with the path of privatization because the loss of consumer surplus and tax revenue exceeds the increases in profits, even if the environment is less damaged.     

The environmental and macroeconomic effects of socially responsible investment

We analyze the effects of socially responsible investment and public abatement on environmental quality and the economy in a continuous-time dynamic growth model featuring optimizing households and firms. Environmental quality is modeled as a renewable resource. Consumers can invest in government bonds or firm equity. Since investors feel partly responsible for environmental pollution when holding firm equity, they require a premium on the return to equity. We show that socially responsible investment behavior by households partially offsets the positive effects on environmental quality of public abatement policies.     

Insurance as an alternative environmental regulator: findings from a retrospective pollution claims survey

Little inquiry has occurred on insurance as an alternative environmental regulator, despite a growing interest in the subject. This paper presents the findings from a survey and questionnaire on two leading UK insurance companies' pollution claims. Insurers' initial underwriting assessments and post‐loss investigations and insureds' environmental management practices are poorly developed regarding pollution issues. Insurance is currently a weak financial instrument to prevent pollution losses. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment     

Non-cooperative pollution control in an inter-jurisdictional setting

This paper examines various circumstances under which decentralized pollution policies can be efficient both in federal settings and in multi-region settings with labor mobility. We consider a model in which pollution control policies are set by regional governments non-cooperatively and pollution damages are borne by the residents of all regions. We characterize the efficiency of pollution policies, and of population allocation among regions, in a variety of scenarios, including when pollution policies are enacted before interregional transfers are determined by the federal government and before migration occurs; when migration decisions are taken before policy decisions; in the absence of a central government if regional governments can make voluntary interregional transfers; when decisions over pollution control policies are followed by voluntary contributions by regions to a national public good; when regions can commit to matching the abatement efforts of each other; and when regions can commit to specific levels of abatement contingent on the emissions of other regions not exceeding some maximum level.     

Does local government competition aggravate haze pollution? A new perspective of factor market distortion

Haze pollution has become a new threat to China's sustainable development, but it may be that local government behaviour can play an important role in the prevention and control of pollutants. A dynamic spatial autoregressive (SAR) model is used to study the relationship between local government competition and haze pollution. To further explore the indirect impact of factor market distortion on haze pollution and control potential endogeneity problems, a newly developed intermediary effect model that incorporates the characteristics of the generalized method of moments (GMM) is utilized to explore how factor market distortion indirectly affects haze pollution. The research results show that regional haze pollution in China is characterized by significant spatial correlation, and local government competition has a positive impact on haze pollution; that is, local government competition exacerbates haze pollution. In general, local government competition not only directly leads to an increase in haze pollution but also further intensifies it by distorting the local factor market, and the intermediary role of factor market distortion is approximately 7.04%. The results of the regional inspection found that competition among local governments in the eastern region did not lead to haze pollution, and distortion of the factor market did not exist as an intermediary effect. However, both direct and intermediary effects are significant in the central and western regions. Therefore, an official performance appraisal system that includes ecological constraints should be established to guide the benign transformation of local government competition, and an environmental management mechanism must be developed for joint prevention and control to reduce haze pollution. In addition, the free flow of factors and marketization are equally important.     

NO x Emissions and the Use of Advanced Pollution Abatement Techniques in West Germany

This paper concentrates on the integration of pollution abatement techniques for NO x emissions into the environmentally enlarged input-output model PANTA RHEI II for West Germany. The use of available abatement technologies is explained by emission prices, investment and technological factors for different sectors and energy carriers. Simulation runs to the year 2005 show the economic, environmental and technological effects of a tax on NO x emissions, when revenues are recycled via reductions of employers' social security contributions. A cut of emissions by almost one third against the businessas-usual level is reached. In particular, the use of advanced pollution abatement techniques and structural changes prevent negative economic effects on the macro level. Lower real wages even induce higher employment.     

A NOTE ON TRADE LIBERALIZATION, PUBLIC ABATEMENT, AND WELFARE

This paper extends Haibara (2006) in order to focus on the welfare consequences of a pollution tax and foreign aid financed for public abatement. The main finding is that environmental protection as a result of increasing a pollution tax by the aid recipient increases the optimal value of foreign aid chosen by the donor and reduces that of a tariff chosen by the recipient. This implies that international environmental cooperation is possible between the donor and the recipient.     

外国直接投资的环保技术溢出途径研究--基于2004年中国工业企业普查数据的实证研究

减排技术的国际传播可以通过外国直接投资水平溢出和垂直溢出来实现。本文通过tobit模型实证研究,发现外国直接投资对减少污染排放的水平溢出比较有效,而垂直溢出方面总体较差,企业规模和所有制形式都是影响环保技术垂直溢出的主要因素。扩大外资的环保技术扩散效应,需要在全国执行更加严格的环保标准。     

The effects of an environmental accountability system on local environmental governance and firms’ emissions

The Chinese central government introduced the environmental accountability system (EAS) policy in 2006 to encourage local governments to execute environmental policies appropriately. However, the effects of this EAS policy have not been investigated at the firm level. In this study, we first measured the environmental governance intensity of local governments by calculating the environment word portion (EWP) of the annual governments’ work reports and found that local governments increased their efforts after the EAS policy implementation. We then constructed a continuous difference-in-difference (DID) strategy to estimate the effect of the EAS on firms’ emission and found that firms significantly reduced their sulphur dioxide (SO₂) emission under the regulation intensity of local governments after the EAS policy. The reductions are mainly because of the private, non-export, labour- and capital-intensive firms. The EAS policy may encourage firms to reduce coal usage, design more products, decrease capacity investment and even withdraw from the market, thus reducing pollutant emission. Finally, we tested firms’ response in various polluting sectors and found that the EAS policy may cause local governments to fail in distinguishing low pollution sectors from high pollution sectors.     

Is there a ‘California effect’ in US environmental policymaking?

What determines state environmental policymaking in the US? Vogel (Trading Up: Consumer and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995; J. Eur. Pub. Pol. 4 (1997) 556–571) argues that California has been a de facto leader since the early 1970s in terms of automobile emissions standards. In this paper, we investigate the generality of California’s leadership role with respect to changes in overall pollution abatement expenditures. We present a simple model of yardstick competition in abatement costs. Using state-level panel data from 1977 to 1994 on abatement costs, our results indicate at best a minor role for California. Other states, in particular California’s immediate neighbors, do not appear to use California as a guideline.