analysing the determinants of environmental technology investments a panel data study of spanish industrial sectors abstract the aim of this paper is to empirically assess the determinants of environmental technology investments in the spanish industrial sectors with the help of panel data econometric techniques the paper confirms the relevance of the stringency of environmental regulation to explain overall investment patterns in environmental technologies these investments are also positively related to human and physical capital intensity and r d intensity and negatively related to the export intensity of sectors furthermore the study shows that the determinants for investments are likely to differ between environmental technology types i e end of pipe versus cleaner technologies

the empirical analysis of the determinants for environmental technological change a research agenda abstract technological change is usually considered a necessary albeit not sufficient condition for a transition to sustainability however the empirical analysis of the determinants to environmental technological change has not received too much attention in the environmental ecological economics literature and many open questions remain in this context based on a careful review of the literature this paper argues that further analysis should address several issues at different levels i e regarding the conceptual framework the thematic scope of the studies some methodological issues and other aspects related to the environmental policy variable first an integrated conceptual framework which takes into account the interplay between relevant variables influencing environmental technological change i e factors internal and external to the firm and characteristics of the environmental technologies and all the stages of this process with a greater emphasis on the invention stage should be developed other aspects should then be tackled including a focus on several themes i e a greater attention to cross sectoral technologies the barriers to different types of environmental technologies the international dimension of environmental technological change and environmental technological change in small and medium size enterprises methodological issues combination of case studies and econometric modelling and several issues related to the environmental policy variable

conformism peer pressure and adverse selection to examine the effects of peer pressure in adverse selection problem we define a peer pressure function that represents the psychological costs and incorporate it into the agent s utility function based on these assumptions the efficient agent who has conformity preference produces less outputs than the first best level while the inefficient agent produces more than the second best level of standard adverse selection output when the agents feel peer pressure among themselves although the production gap between the utility functions under peer pressure narrows the gap of the ex post information rent goes wider as the information rent of efficient agents increases our theoretical results are consistent with some empirical experimental findings

the effects of environmental regulation on technology diffusion the case of chlorine manufacturing we use a hazard model to estimate the effect of environmental regulation on the diffusion of membrane cell production technology in the chlorine manufacturing industry we estimate the effect of regulation on both the adoption of the membrane technology at existing plants and on the exit of existing plants using older technologies we find that environmental regulation did affect the diffusion of the cleaner technology in the chlorine industry however it did so not by encouraging the adoption of membrane cells by existing facilities but by reducing the demand for chlorine and hence encouraging the shutdown of facilities using the environmentally inferior options this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

peer pressure and partnerships partnerships and profit sharing are often claimed to motivate workers by giving them a share of the pie but in organizations of any significant size the free rider effects would seem to choke off

the impact of centralization on pharmaceutical procurement prices the role of institutional quality and corruption abstractthe impact of centralization on pharmaceutical procurement prices the role of institutional quality and corruption regional studies this paper deals with the open issue regarding centralized versus decentralized public procurement strategy using a unique dataset on tender prices of selected drugs for hospital usage provided by a sample of 52 italian local health service providers aziende sanitarie locali asls between 2009 and 2012 the paper tests which procurement system centralized decentralized or hybrid performs better controlling for several covariates including measures of institutional quality and corruption it finds that centralized and hybrid procurers pay lower prices than decentralized units moreover the results show that in areas in which institutional quality is lower or corruption is higher the effect of centralization in terms of negotiating lower prices is much stronger with savings of up to 60 of the price paid by asls that procure independently

filling a gap in traditional transaction cost economics towards transaction benefits based analysis abstract this paper analyzes dyadic partnership formation between asymmetric buyers and specialized suppliers in the first part of the paper different economics of organization based approaches are evaluated their basic implications concerning the rise of partnerships are derived in the second part a dynamized transaction cost and benefit model is introduced to analyze the most critical elements of a typical partnership decision the final part is based on insights from practice and in depth interviews among 12 specialized suppliers and their four large incumbent partners in the information and telecommunications industry

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

an empirical study of third party purchase new zealand users perspective abstractthis article investigates the potential for third party purchase 3pp services offered by third party logistics 3pl providers from the perspective of 3pl users based on transaction cost analysis we conducted a survey of new zealand 3pl users and received 163 usable responses structural equation modelling was used to test the conceptual model we found that 3pl users are more likely to adopt 3pp service when there is greater uncertainty asset specificity frequency and transaction size do not have a significant relationship with 3pp service adoption however 3pp service is significantly related to the value to client and benefit to 3pl provider this study is pioneering research on 3pp service as a value added service offered by 3pl providers from the perspective of 3pl users the findings suggest that offering 3pp service will provide mutual benefits and value for both 3pl users and their 3pl providers

dynamic incentives of environmental regulations the effects of alternative policy instruments on technology diffusion abstract we develop a framework for comparing empirically the effects of alternative environmental policy instruments on the diffusion of new technology market based and command and control approaches can he quantitatively compared by estimating the economic penalty that firms through their actions reveal to be associated with violation of standards in the context of concerns about global climate change we empirically examine the likely effects of pigouvian taxes technology adoption subsidies and technology standards we employ state level data on the diffusion of thermal insulation in new home construction comparing the effects of energy prices insulation cost and building codes

the influence of market demand upon innovation a critical review of some recent empirical studies abstract a number of recent empirical studies of technical change at the level of the individual firm have concluded that market demand is the dominant influence upon the innovation process calling forth innovations in market economies the pace of innovation in the private sector heavily influences the growth of national output and productivity and these studies and their conclusions have therefore received much attention having been extensively quoted in discussions of appropriate government policy for the encouragement of innovation this paper reviews a number of these studies and concludes that their findings and the interpretations of their findings in the secondary literature are seriously flawed and in many cases invalid the proposition that market demand governs the innovation process is by no means conclusively demonstrated in these studies and they are therefore inadequate and inappropriate guides for the formulation of policy most of the studies examined employ a working definition of demand factors which is so broad as to embrace a range of possible influences upon innovation which should more properly be classified elsewhere the concept of demand utilized in these studies bears little resemblance to the more restrictive and precise definition of market demand found in economics in addition the phenomena analyzed in these studies are a very heterogeneous lot the studies do not address identical empirical questions and their findings are as a result neither uniform nor unambiguous both demand and supply side influences are crucial to understanding the innovation process and it is the exclusive preoccupation with only one set of these forces which is criticized in this paper some implications of the criticism for government policy toward innovation are discussed in the conclusion

the role of the public administrations in the promotion of the environmental activity in spanish industrial companies abstract an aim of this study is to analyse the managers opinions in relation to the environmental policy instruments that the public administrations promote in order to force firms to care for the natural environment in the same way we study the relation between the perceived importance of these instruments and the level of collaboration between the public administrations and firms in this area taking into consideration the fact that in spain firms are still in a relatively incipient stage from an environmental standpoint we analyse how these instruments are assessed by managers of spanish industrial firms besides we study whether several opinions are one of the causes of less collaboration in environmental public programs we show that the tightening of the legislation in the environmental area induces a deeper consciousness among companies about the environmental problem because of this and despite having other instruments the public administrations should legislate and enforce the legislation as a first measure of environmental control afterwards we were able to confirm that there does not exist any relation between the importance of the administrative instruments and the perception of the efficacy of these on the part of the managers as they are being implemented nowadays we also confirm that there are no significant differences in the judgement of the importance efficacy relation among those companies that maintain different type of relations with the public administrations in the environmental field this result allows us to arrive at the conclusion that in spite of the differences between the importance and the efficacy that the companies attach to the administrative instruments these differences do not influence the type of relations that the companies maintain with the public administrations in the environmental field therefore it seems that these relations depend on other factors perhaps the level of information of the companies about the public programs or about the necessary resources to have access to them

the standard error of regressions statistical significance as used in economics has weak theoretical justification in particular it merges statistical and substantive significance the 182 papers using regression analysis in the american economic review in the 1980s were tested against 19 criteria for the accepted use of statistical significance most some three quarters of the papers did poorly likewise textbooks in econometrics do not distinguish statistical and economic significance statistical significance should not be the focus of empirical economics

investigating policy and r d effects on environmental innovation a meta analysis in the last decades a wide research effort has been devoted at the analysis of the determinants of environmental innovation ei whereas agreement seemed to emerge around a cluster of determinants mainly technology push market pull policy push pull and firm specific factors empirical analyses have failed to provide strong confirmation on the relevance of some core variables after a qualitative discussion of this literature we empirically assess it by exploiting meta regression analysis techniques to test the effectiveness of two determinants policy and r d our findings are clear as for the first we show that only certain types of policy have proven to affect ei in particular regulatory stringency as for r d we show that the use of estimation methods is not neutral to the outcome of the primary studies

verifying the relation between labor productivity and productive efficiency by means of the properties of the input output matrices the european case abstract this article discusses the relationship between labor productivity and the degree of production efficiency for 24 countries inside the european union eu over a period of 17 years a panel data econometric model is used to estimate it to this end an indicator of productive efficiency has been applied it is based on the dominant eigenvalue of the matrix of technical coefficients of the input output model this indicator allows the relationship between the economic sectors of each country and its productive technologies to be taken into account the results reveal a significant relationship between the proposed productive efficiency indicator and labor productivity finally several implications from a policy perspective are suggested as concluding remarks

general wisdom concerning the factors affecting the adoption of cleaner technologies a survey 1990 2007 abstract cleaner technologies ct have recently received much attention in diverse media and policy agendas this comes out of the clear role they play in environmental protection and sustainability and the large potential to contribute to economic growth and competitiveness the realization of both potentials depends on the level diffusion and exploitation achieved today very low this article presents a selective survey of papers that today represent the general wisdom concerning the factors affecting adoption as a primary condition to diffusion and exploitation of ct the paper helps to clarify the challenges facing diffusion modelers and policy makers when dealing with policy design assessing the levels of diffusion achieved as well as the factors affecting diffusion of a particular technology the paper ends outlining further research need in the field

clean evidence on peer effects we study subjects who were asked to fill letters into envelopes with a remuneration independent of output in the pair treatment two subjects worked at the same time in the same room and peer effects were possible in the single treatment subjects worked alone and peer effects were ruled out we find evidence of peer effects in the pair treatment because the standard deviations of output are smaller within pairs than between pairs moreover average output is higher in the pair treatment thus peer effects raise productivity finally low productivity workers are the most sensitive to the behavior of peers

the persistency and volatility of the firm r d investment revisited from the perspective of technological capability abstract the persistency and volatility of firm rd however previous research has found mixed evidence concerning the persistency and volatility of firm rd positive shocks however technological capability offsets the internal cash flow effect and causes persistency in rd negative shocks these imply that r d investment is not a dichotomous decision between persistency and volatility and is conditional on each firm s technological capability

does the development of environmental innovation require different resources evidence from spanish manufacturing firms in recent years environmental innovations are getting increasingly at the center both of the scientific debate and of the policy maker agenda adopting the resource based view this paper provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the specific role of internal external and hybrid resources in the environmental innovation development using a dataset of 4829 spanish manufacturing firms and estimating probit models it is found that internal resources have greater importance for environmental innovations moreover green innovators seem to be characterized by more intensive external relationships for hybrid resources acquisition of equipment but not of patents is more relevant finally evidence suggest the relevance of complementing the analysis of the external factors triggering environmental innovations with those of the internal resources the firm has access to in order to fully understand and support the development of environmental innovations

empirical generalizations in eco innovation a meta analytic approach abstract although discussions on eco innovation are ongoing and the concept is evolving its central idea is highly stimulating thus a great number of studies has been conducted in recent years around the world based on different perspectives contexts and outcomes therefore the identification and analysis of factors related to eco innovation are essential if knowledge in this field is to be improved and consolidated this research aimed to advance our understanding of the different dimensions of eco innovation through a meta analytical review of its antecedents or drivers consequents and moderators thus a total of 71 studies was analysed generating 818 effect sizes and 220 582 cumulative samples the main findings revealed that barriers company capabilities environmental regulation market turbulence information sources r d and company size were significant antecedents to eco innovation it was also noted that a significance relationship exists between eco innovation and firm performance regarding the moderating effect it was observed that culture the economic situation of the country and context influence the relationship between eco innovation and performance the results revealed that countries with a lower hdi presented stronger effects between eco innovation and firm performance than countries with a higher hdi these findings were interesting because they could demonstrate that eco innovation tends to promote more competitive advantage in countries with environmental problems and consequently a lower hdi

effects of heterogeneous technological progress on haze pollution evidence from china abstract technological progress plays an important role in combating haze pollution in the long run however existing studies often ignore the inconsistent effects on the reduction of haze brought by different types of technological progress considering the potential heterogeneity among technological progress this paper constructs a theoretical framework to analyse the impact of heterogeneous technological progress on haze pollution using annual data from 30 provinces and cities in china for the period of 2003 to 2016 a systematic gmm method is applied to empirically test the effects of neutral technological progress and biased technological progress on haze pollution the results show that first due to cost reduction effect and income effect neutral technological progress and labour saving technological progress are conducive to haze reduction while the impact of capital saving technological progress on haze pollution is insignificant second because of the energy rebound effect energy saving technological progress cannot effectively reduce haze pollution third the haze reduction effects of different types of technological progress show significant regional heterogeneity in china last in terms of the control variables strengthening environmental regulation is the only factor that can be helpful in haze reduction others intensify haze pollution

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

determinants of environmental innovation new evidence from german panel data sources abstract in most cases empirical analyses of environmental innovations based on firm level data relied on surveys for one point in time these surveys allow for the inclusion of many explanatory variables such as different policy instruments or the influence of pressure groups but it is not possible to address the dynamic character of environmental innovations this paper uses two german panel databases the establishment panel of the institute for employment research iab and the mannheim innovation panel mip of the centre for european economic research zew to explore the determinants of environmental innovations the econometric estimations show that the improvement of the technological capabilities knowledge capital by r d triggers environmental innovations environmental regulation environmental management tools and general organizational changes also encourage environmental innovation a result that has also been postulated by the famous porter hypothesis

motives behind purchasing consortia abstract although purchasing cooperation between independent companies has been practiced for a long time the phenomenon is not extensively researched especially purchasing consortiums formed by industrial companies have received relatively little attention in literature of the discipline in this paper the key results of the larger study concerning industrial consortium purchasing are presented the study was recently conducted and tested in finnish machine manufacturing industry the objective of this paper is to find out the motives behind purchasing consortia as foundations for the empirical study three theories explaining why companies form purchasing consortia are presented the results of the study indicate that two main reasons for the companies to cooperate on purchasing are the expected cost savings and the collection of information on supply markets

determinants of environmental innovation in us manufacturing industries abstract this paper provides new evidence on the determinants of environmental innovation we employ panel data models to study how environmental innovation by us manufacturing industries responded to changes in pollution abatement expenditures and regulatory enforcement during the period 1983 through 1992 we find that 1 environmental innovation as measured by the number of successful environmental patent applications granted to the industry responded to increases in pollution abatement expenditures however 2 increased monitoring and enforcement activities related to existing regulations did not provide any additional incentive to innovate we also find some empirical evidence that environmental innovation is more likely to occur in industries that are internationally competitive

computing core allocations in cooperative games with an application to cooperative procurement abstract cooperative game theory defines several concepts for distributing outcome shares in a cooperative game with transferable utilities one of the most famous solution concepts is the core which defines a set of outcome allocations that are stable such that no coalition has an incentive to leave the grand coalition in this paper we propose a general procedure to compute a core element or to detect that no core allocation exists which is based on mathematical programming techniques the procedure proposed in this paper can be applied to a wide class of cooperative games where the characteristic function is given by the optimum objective function value of a complex optimization problem for cooperative procurement which is an example from the field of supply chain management where some literature on the core concept already exists we prove the applicability and provide computational results to demonstrate that games with 150 players can be handled

community pressure and clean technology in the informal sector an econometric analysis of the adoption of propane by traditional mexican brickmakers abstract in many developing countries the informal sector comprised of low technology unlicensed micro enterprises is a major source of pollution environmental management in this sector is exceptionally challenging though clean technologies offer a means of mitigating the problem to our knowledge there has been no rigorous empirical research on why informal or even small scale firms do and do not adopt them as a first step toward filling this gap this paper presents the results of an econometric analysis of the diffusion of propane among informal traditional brickmakers in cd juarez mexico a leading source of air pollution owing to their reliance on cheap highly polluting fuels such as used tires and scrap wood the two key policy implications of our analysis are that 1 it is possible to successfully promote the adoption of a clean technology by intensely competitive informal firms even when the new technology significantly raises variable costs and 2 community pressure applied by competing firms and private sector local organizations can generate incentives for adoption

innovation and the international diffusion of environmentally responsive technology abstract new evidence is presented on environmental innovation and diffusion over the 1970s and 1980s at a global level a substantial amount of innovations occurred in the united states japan and germany the share of environmental patents in all patents varied between 0 6 and 3 and as such was higher than the corresponding share of pollution abatement expenditure in gdp japanese environmental innovation rates were consistently high certain plausible connections between environmental regulation and innovation also emerge across these three countries and over time innovation responded to pollution abatement expenditure an indicator of the severity of environmental regulations environmental patenting rates in developing countries were also high reaching 2 in many years in brazil developing country innovators obtained a non trivial number of patents most of which appear geared towards adapting imported technologies to local conditions however domestic innovation was only one path to new technologies imports of disembodied environmental technologies foreign patents registered in developing countries were substantial foreign patents were typically important or generic patents evidence also suggests that such patents protected intellectual property in equipment exported developing countries especially in east asia often chose to obtain technologies embodied in pollution abatement equipment

perceived barriers and policy solutions in clean energy infrastructure investment international political negotiations and national policy for climate change mitigation are increasingly focussed on the mobilisation and scale up of investments in clean energy infrastructure this paper aims to develop the understanding of how institutional investors in the private sector perceive barriers to scaling up investment into clean energy infrastructure and what policy solutions to those barriers they advocate this paper adds to existing scientific knowledge through a clear focus on private sector perceptions through the analysis of previous public statements from organisations and coalitions in the finance sector a number of investment barriers were identified these initial barriers fed into a delphi process the outputs of the delphi process were categorized into five sets of barriers and a number of policy solutions associated with investing into clean energy solutions we conclude that there is a need for better engagement with the institutional investment community to ensure further effort on policy development that underpins investments at scale is effective and efficient

unfair allocation of gains under the equal price allocation method in purchasing groups certain purchasing groups do not flourish a supposed reason for this is a creeping dissatisfaction among various members of a group with the allocation of the cooperative gains in this paper we analyze unfairness resulting from using the commonly used equal price ep method for allocating gains under the assumption of continuous quantity discounts we demonstrate that this unfairness is caused by neglecting a particular component of the added value of individual group members next we develop two fairness ratios and tie these to fairness properties from cooperative game theory the ratios show among other things that being too big a player in a purchasing group can lead to decreasing gains they can be used to assess if ep is an unfair method in specific situations finally we discuss measures a purchasing group could consider in order to attenuate perceived unfairness thereby the group may improve its stability and prosperity