environmental policy and exports evidence from chinese cities we study environmental regulation and its role for trade in china specifically we assess the effectiveness of an environmental policy in china that introduced stricter regulations on sulfur dioxide so2 emissions in targeted cities to identify the causal effect of this policy on exports we use sectoral export data for a panel of chinese cities and exploit variations in exports between cities and sectors over time and in a second step between firm types we find a relative fall in sectoral exports in targeted cities after the implementation of the policy which is sharper the more polluting the industry further we find that the observed effect is mainly driven by privately owned firms whereas exports of state owned firms seem to be unaffected by the new policy this finding is consistent with the preferential political treatment of state owned firms in china

an open economy model of the effects of unilateral environmental policy by a large developing country abstract in this paper we pose the following question why is it that despite the universal recognition of the need for global environmental protection developing countries have been lax in instituting stringent environmental regulations addressing this question from an economic standpoint we show that there are plausible theoretical circumstances in which a large developing country can be worse off if it chooses to implement environmental policy in an uncoordinated fashion the empirical dimension of this question is stressed and the key parameters such as elasticities and marginal propensities to consume which are germane to any policy discussion regarding this issue are identified second we study once again from the perspective of a large developing country the possibility of using the domestic tax structure optimally to attain environmental policy objectives in a second best environment this scenario involves taxing pollution indirectly by using product taxes finally keeping the empirical dimension of the question in mind we show how to compute optimal externality correcting taxes these taxes are primarily a function of different kinds of elasticities

multiple environmental policies and pollution haven hypothesis evidence from china s polluting industries abstract theoretical studies of pollution haven hypothesis predict that differentiated environmental regulation policies will result in inter country relocation of polluting industries this paper investigates pollution haven hypothesis at domestic level in china using panel data of 30 provincial level regions for the period 2004 to 2013 this paper empirically examines to what extent multiple environmental policies affect intra country relocation of polluting industries in china it is found that the implementation of both economic policy instrument like pollution discharge fee and public participation like letter complaints on environmental problems encourages industrial relocation whereas the implementation of environmental legal policy instrument like laws regulations and rules prevents polluting industries from relocating to other regions it is also found that the relocation effect of environmental policies varies with industrial characteristics compared with water pollution intensive industry air pollution intensive industry dominated by stated owned capitals are insensitive to legal policy instruments these findings suggest that the validity of pollution haven hypothesis is jointly associated with the type of environmental policy as well as industrial characteristics

environmental policy in the european union fostering the development of pollution havens abstract a pollution haven occurs when dirty industries from developed nations relocate to developing nations in order to avoid strict environmental standards or developed nations imports of dirty industries expand replacing domestic production the purpose of this study is to determine whether the european union eu has increased its imports of dirty goods from poorer less democratic countries during a period of more stringent environmental standards previous empirical studies such as those by levinson and taylor levinson a and taylor m s in press unmasking the pollution haven effect international economic review ederington levinson and minier ederington j levinson a and minier j 2005 footloose and pollution free review of economics and statistics 87 92 99 kahn and yoshino 2004 and ederington and minier ederington j and minier j 2003 is environmental policy a secondary trade barrier an empirical analysis canadian journal of economics 36 137 54 find evidence that united states imports are responsive to changes in environmental stringency but the effects of eu policy have not been examined as thoroughly our study follows kahn kahn m e 2003 the geography of us pollution intensive trade evidence from 1958 to 1994 regional science and urban economics 33 383 400 and examines the impact of industry energy intensity and toxicity measured by an energy index and a toxic release inventory tri index on imports into the eu at the 2 digit industry level from 1970 to 1999 we use the signing of the maastricht treaty to signify a period of more uniform and stringent community wide environmental standards 1993 1999 and identify the level of per capita gdp within an eu trading partner we find an increased amount of eu energy intensive trade with poorer countries during the period with more stringent eu environmental standards this result is not robust however when poorer countries are defined by oecd membership and geographic region we do not find an increased amount of eu toxic intensive trade with poorer countries although there is some evidence of increased eu imports of toxic goods from poorer oecd and non eu european countries for our full sample of trading partners in all regions the evidence supports the phh for eu energy intensive trade but not for toxic intensive trade results for regional trade analysis are less clear

sequential auctions with informational externalities and aversion to price risk decreasing and increasing price sequences a large body of empirical research has shown that prices of identical goods sold sequentially sometimes increase and often decline across rounds this article introduces a tractable form of risk aversion called aversion to price risk and shows that declining prices arise naturally when bidders are averse to price risk when there are informational externalities there is a countervailing effect which pushes prices to raise along the path of a sequential auction even if bidder s signals are independent the article shows how to decompose the effect of aversion to price risk from the effect of informational externalities

decoupling of emissions and gdp evidence from aggregate and provincial chinese data abstract we provide a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between greenhouse gas ghg emissions and gdp in china using both aggregate and provincial data the trend or kuznets elasticity is about 0 6 for china higher than that in advanced countries but below that of major emerging markets the elasticity is somewhat lower for consumption based emissions than for production based emissions providing mild evidence consistent with the pollution haven hypothesis the kuznets elasticity is much lower for the last three decades than for the three previous decades suggesting a longer term trend toward decoupling as china has become richer further evidence of this comes from provincial data richer provinces tend to have smaller kuznets elasticities than poorer ones in addition to the trend relationship we find that there is a cyclical relation also holding in china

environmental regulations and industrial competitiveness evidence from china economic activities are closely related to real world environmental issues currently more attention is paid to the association between environmental regulations and industrial competitiveness ic because of pressures on economic development and environmental protection in this study we identify and explain the association between environmental regulations and ic in china as the largest developing country in the world china has the unavoidable responsibility of protecting the environment and promoting global economic development we analyse the mechanisms behind environmental regulations and industrial competiveness at the provincial level and conclude that the impact of environmental regulations upon ic is not a simple linear one but a u shaped relationship it is argued that the crucial intervention to activate the u shaped relationship or porter s hypothesis is innovation which can be triggered by stringent regulations and well designed policies

trade openness and the environmental kuznets curve evidence from chinese cities this paper examines the impact of economic growth and trade openness on environment in 261 chinese cities over the period of 2004 2013 using recently developed continuously updated fully modified method which allows for both cross sectional dependence and endogeneity two types of pollutants industrial waste water and sulphur dioxide are investigated and three measures of openness are employed in the regression from the results we find that the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis holds not only for the whole china but also in different regions it is estimated that wastewater pollution increases with economic development until per capita gdp reaching the turning point of 42 991 48 828 yuan in constant 2002 price which varies depending on the specific measure of trade openness the turning point for sulphur dioxide is found to occur at a much lower income level around 9 588 10 663 yuan per capita gdp furthermore export is mostly found to be positively related with pollution and the impact of import is likely to be negative for both the whole china and across regions if the significance is identified in the estimation results

regulation factor rewards and international trade this paper develops an approach for incorporating regulation into the theory of production distribution and trade using environmental regulation as an example four major conclusions emerge in the course of the analysis 1 production process regulation is equivalent in its effect on other cooperating factors to neutral technical regress i e negative progress 2 specific unambiguous income redistribution consequences follow from such regulation if commodity prices are held constant the factor used relatively intensively in the non regulated industry will gain absolutely in terms of both goods 3 unilateral or uncoordinated regulation destroys the link between uniform world commod ity prices and identical factor proportions factors prices across trading countries or regions 4 if any factor of production is freely mobile across frontiers the least differential regulation as between countries will entirely drive out the regulated industry from the more to the less regulated economy

international trade and environmental quality a survey abstract international trade has been incorporating various aspects of environmental issues since 1970 the extent to which environmental problems might affect many facets of trade or vice versa has been the subject of considerable debate over these years in this article we have attempted to establish some of the links between international trade and environmental quality by performing a comprehensive literature review we discuss issues such as establishing direct and indirect effects of international trade on environmental quality effects of trade on economic development environmental quality and energy and their relation with each other and finally the role of governments and international organizations in this context studies have so far revealed some linkages between trade and environment through conventional trade theory however interactions between international trade and types of pollution their sink and assimilative capacity need to be analyzed using a general equilibrium approach currently very little knowledge and agreement on the nature of interactions between trade theories development process and environmental quality exist existing studies have shown that the structure of environmental regulations should be modified to reflect the existence of trade under imperfect competition therefore further research on the interaction between new trade theory and environmental regulation is needed also theoretical and quantitative analysis regarding the effects of environmental regulations on competitiveness and location decision is needed the intensity and type of environmental measures vary across issues and countries therefore harmonizing environmental measures creates an inefficient atmosphere and to assume that trade restrictions will either improve or reverse the environmental damages is a serious mistake given the dynamic and intricate nature of the problem trade and environment debate continues despite vast research and poses a challenge for researchers and policy makers in the foreseeable future

price trends at livestock auctions auction bidders may pursue a large number of reasonable bidding strategies including those that are risk neutral and risk averse risk averse bidders are especially tempted by the auction process to discriminate against themselves that is to offer prices close to their reservation prices or target prices self discrimination in turn usually implies that quality corrected prices of individual lots trend downward as the sale proceeds the empirical evidence for downtrending prices at selected yearling steer sales is examined implications are then drawn for auction pricing efficiency and equity

the impact of environmental policy stringency on industrial r d conditional on pollution intensity and relocation costs stringent environmental regulations may encourage industrial innovation as technological advancements lower the cost of pollution abatement popp et al in handbook of the economics of innovation vol ii academic press burlington pp 873 938 2010 the pollution havens hypothesis on the other hand indicates that rather than innovating dirty industries may relocate to countries with less stringent environmental regulations copeland and taylor in j econ lit 42 1 7 71 2004 thus more stringent environmental regulations may increase or decrease innovative activities this paper examines empirically the impact of environmental regulations on r d intensities and r d expenditures in 21 manufacturing industries in 28 oecd countries from 2000 to 2007 i consider pollution intensity and the relative ease of relocation immobility as industry characteristics that determine the optimal industry response to increased environmental policy stringency i find that more pollution intensive industries innovate less as regulatory environments become more restrictive relative to less pollution intensive industries at the same time more immobile industries innovate more than more mobile industries as environmental regulations become more stringent illustrating innovation as an alternative to relocation

is environmental policy a secondary trade barrier an empirical analysis should international trade agreements be extended to include negotiations over environmental policy the answer depends on whether countries distort levels of environmental regulations as a secondary means of providing protection to domestic industries our results suggest that they do previous studies of this relationship have treated the level of environmental regulation as exogenous and found a negligible correlation between environmental regulation and trade flows in contrast we find that when the level of environmental regulation is modelled as an endogenous variable its estimated effect on trade flows is significantly higher than previously reported jel classification fl f14 f18 est ce que la politique environnementale est une barriere commerciale secondaire une analyse empirique est ce que les accords commerciaux internationaux doivent etre etendus pour couvrir la politique environnementale la reponse depend du degre de distorsion que les pays introduisent dans leur politique environnementale pour proteger leurs industries nationales nos resultats suggerent que cet impact est important des etudes anterieures de cette relation ont traite la politique environnementale comme exogene et ont montre qu il existe une co relation negligeable entre politique envir onnementale et flux commerciaux au contraire nous revelons que quand la politique environnementale est consideree comme variable endoge ne son effet sur les flux com merciaux est plus eleve de maniere significative que ce qu on a note anterieurement

the enlargement of the european union effects on trade and emissions of greenhouse gases abstract with the gradual accession of various central and eastern european countries ceecs to the european union eu international trade between the eu and the ceecs will change as a result of trade liberalisation and the mobility of production factors within the eu the eu and most of the ceecs have already committed themselves to reduce by 2008 2012 their emissions of greenhouse gases ghgs by 8 compared to the 1990 level this paper reports on an investigation of the potential consequences of the enlargement of the eu and of the emission reduction target set by the kyoto protocol on the sectoral production patterns and international trade a comparative static general equilibrium model was developed to examine the impacts under different scenarios for illustrative purposes two regions the eu and the ceecs and three categories of goods and services agricultural goods industrial goods and services were included the model was calibrated by the 1998 data the model was subsequently applied to study the effects of free trade the mobility of factors and the environmental constraints on production and international trade in light of the enlargement of the eu we show that in this specific context free trade is beneficial to economic welfare and does not necessarily increase emissions of greenhouse gases the mobility of factors also increases economic welfare but in the case of fixed production technology it may harm the environment through more emissions of ghgs

trims environmental taxes and foreign investment various second best policy mixes of investment measures and environmental taxes for a polluted small open economy with foreign capital and immovable trade restrictions are examined the optimal policy mix depends on the types of trade restrictions when tariffs are in place strict policies of pollution taxes and export requirements are optimal for alleviating tariff induced consumption and production distortions when involuntary quotas are used in lieu of tariffs however the optimal policy mix is a zero export requirement and pigouvian taxes on pollution for the case of vers however the optimal policy demands export requirements and a less stringent pollution tax trims impots environnementaux et investissement etranger ce memoire examine certains ensembles de politiques de second ordre portant sur l investissement et les impots environnementaux dans une petite economie ouverte polluee ou il y a capital etranger et restrictions au commerce international quand on a des droits de douane en place des politiques de fiscalite environnementale et d exportations requises sont optimales pour corriger les distorsions aux patterns de production et de consommation engendrees par les droits de douane cependant quand des contingentements involontaires sont en place plutot que des droits de douane le melange optimal de politiques est de ne pas requerir d exportation mais d imposer des taxes a la pigou sur la pollution pour ce qui est des restrictions volontaires a l exportation le melange optimal de politiques reclame une taxe moins forte sur la pollution accompagnee par un certain niveau d exportation requis

political economy aspects of climate change mitigation efforts regardless of the policies used to mitigate climate change a positive and relatively high price of carbon will have to be established with slow convergence across regions leading to huge rents up to capture way beyond those that have been fought over in the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt based international trading system the paper explores the political economy feasibility and desirability implications of the two main alternatives a carbon tax and a cap and trade cat system having the same concerns cat systems in the eu and the us have accounted for different outcomes in each case likely leakages under foreseeable carbon prices are estimated to be small and not of an order of magnitude justifying the special allowances sought across a wide spectrum of industries the experience of the eu and us reviewed here suggests that mitigation is likely to continue to be carried out under a cat provided permits are distributed for free to the lobbies whose support is necessary to get adoption of mitigation policies this quota mechanism long used to allocate scarcity in the international trading system both nationally and internationally would end up with the most powerful receiving the quotas rents giving them the leverage and resources to maintain allocation schemes favourable to them

considering the energy water and food nexus towards an integrated modelling approach the areas of energy water and food policy have numerous interwoven concerns ranging from ensuring access to services to environmental impacts to price volatility these issues manifest in very di

green havens and pollution havens we test for pollution haven effects in outward foreign direct investment fdi for different sectors using a comprehensive and exhaustive data set for outward fdi from the netherlands one of the most environmentally stringent countries and a major source of global fdi our evidence suggests that in the sectors natural resources extraction and refining construction retail food processing beverages and tobacco and utilities a less stringent environmental policy in the host country significantly attract fdi what is important for these pollution haven effects is not only regulation but also enforcement of environmental policy in contrast to earlier results it is not only footloose industries that display pollution haven effects but also the traditional pollution intensive industries but for the machines electronics and automotive and transportation and communication sectors a more stringent and better enforced environmental policy attracts more fdi as this may help their reputation for sustainable management and csr these sectors display green haven effects these findings have important implications for the sector distribution of fdi in destination countries

exploring the regional implications of interstate quarantine policies in western australia abstract as a signatory of the world trade organization agreement australia has a responsibility to ensure the behaviour of its internal markets for food and food related products abide by the same rules and regulations as international trade this has generated a need to demonstrate the validity of any measures that restrict competition to avoid disputes and or retaliatory actions by other signatories this paper explores a spatial economic evaluation technique that can be used to examine the welfare implications of quarantine policies for regionalised industries and demonstrates practical application of this technique using two case studies of interstate trade within australia

trade and climate policies do emissions from international transport matter this paper provides orders of magnitude of the importance of co2 emissions from international transport freight activities under a variety of scenarios regarding trade and climate policies it is based on a stylized multi region multi sector cge model that includes the four modes of international transport air water road and rail and where choices regarding the energy mix and transport mode have been endogeneized a separate decomposition of emission changes into the well known scale composition and technique effects is provided scale effects turn out to be roughly double in international transport than in exports while technique effects are weaker due to less substitutability between energy inputs as a result international transport represents half of the world increase in global emissions when trade liberalization is considered isolately when trade liberalization is coupled with a carbon tax limited to rich countries international transport represents roughly one eigth of the carbon leakage effect

free trade and the environment development system abstract we develop a simulation model to analyze the trade environment development system that contains a number of important advances over the earlier and current theoretical models our model like other models has an income induced pollution policy allows country factor endowments to influence trade patterns and allows production factors to be mobile intersectorally unlike other theoretical models our model treats pollution stemming from both production and consumption in a way that does justice to empirical observations we model pollution policy explicitly as an abatement investment thus effectively allowing for differences in pollution intensive technology across countries in addition we allow for an internationally traded intermediate good a natural resource as a result of this novel approach we find that 1 the benefits of trade i can be either positive or negative and ii depend on country endowments and 2 the pollution effects of trade are closely tied to the benefits of trade our model generally shows higher pollution levels under free trade than autarky however our results do not support the pollution haven hypothesis i e trade causes less pollution in developed countries and more pollution in developing ones some developing countries produce more of the pollution intensive good but ultimately consume less pollution under autarky because they have higher per capita income and thus invest more heavily in environmental upgrading under autarky

an empirical investigation of the pollution haven effect with strategic environment and trade policy abstract using a new dataset on the stringency and enforcement of environmental policy this study is the first to find robust confirmation of a pollution haven effect in a cross country context by accounting for strategically determined environment trade and intellectual property right ipr policies a simple game theoretic approach to policy determination is described which suggests an identification strategy based on other country characteristics it is found that for the top 20th percentile of countries in terms of growth in u s multinational affiliate value added as much as 8 6 of that growth between 1999 and 2003 can be attributed to declining relative stringency and enforcement of environmental policy the results are robust to a number of identification tests weak iv tests and third country spatial effects further evidence is found that relatively footloose industries are more likely to be affected by environmental policy than more traditionally dirty industries and enforcement of environmental policies tends to be a more important deterrent than the stringency of the policy set

environmental regulation and us state level production abstract using us data from 1977 1986 we estimate the impact of environmental policy on state level output using parametric and nonparametric techniques while the nonparametric approach yields additional insights the lack of a relationship between environmental regulation and output is robust

environmental regulation and french firms location abroad an economic geography model in an international comparative study abstract in this study we re examine the pollution haven hypothesis by a fresh take on both its theoretical and empirical aspects the originality of our work is twofold first we apply an economic geography model with the aim of deriving a rigorous specification for the impact of environmental regulation on firms location choice second we test a conditional logit model using french firm level data in an international comparative study we confirm evidence of a strong pollution haven effect for our pooled sample of countries receiving french direct investments however through a sensitivity analysis we validate this finding for developed countries and most of emerging economies and central and eastern european countries but not for most countries of the commonwealth of independent states and developing countries where a more stringent environmental regulation seems to attract investments furthermore we highlight a forward looking behavior of firms in terms of their location decision making

estimating the effects of kyoto on bilateral trade flows using matching econometrics many kyoto countries fear a loss of competitiveness due to unilateral climate policy efforts policymakers therefore call for carbon related border tax adjustments with this paper we attempt to estimate the treatment effect of kyoto commitment on bilateral export flows using regression adjusted differences in differences matching techniques the gravity and international environmental agreement formation literatures provide guidelines for the choice of matching variables we find that kyoto countries exports are reduced by 13 to 14 per cent due to kyoto commitment trade effects are largest in energy intensive homogeneous industries such as iron and steel non ferrous metals organic and inorganic chemicals but also in machinery and equipment

footloose and pollution free in numerous studies economists have found little empirical evidence that environmental regulations affect trade flows in this paper we propose and test several common explanations for why the effect of environmental regulations on trade may be difficult to detect we demonstrate that whereas most trade occurs among industrialized economies environmental regulations have stronger effects on trade between industrialized and developing economies we find that for most industries pollution abatement costs are a small component of total costs and are unrelated to trade flows in addition we show that those industries with the largest pollution abatement costs also happen to be the least geographically mobile or footloose after accounting for these distinctions we measure a significant effect of pollution abatement costs on imports from developing countries and in pollution intensive footloose industries

emissions trading of global and local pollutants pollution havens and free riding abstract in the presence of local sulfur and global carbon pollutants we examine the pollution haven hypothesis and free riding behavior under domestic emissions trading poorer southern countries become pollution havens when free trade opens up whenever sulfur damage functions are linear or when sulfur levels in equilibrium are not higher in the south with global trading of carbon permits the pollution haven effect emerges in equilibrium whenever the convex sulfur damage functions are nonlinear countries that do not participate in a global protocol designed to reduce carbon emissions enjoy double benefits stemming from free riding and cleaner local environments

absentee bidders and the declining price anomaly in wine auctions the anomaly is concerned with the observation that in multiple item auctions of identical objects prices tend to decline over time i show that in the case of wine auctions which have been analyzed frequently the anomaly is likely to be caused by the fact that most bids are entered by absentees who use nonoptimal bidding strategies therefore wine auctions can hardly be used to illustrate the standard multiple object auction model

the impact of selected abatement strategies on transnational pollution the terms of trade and factor rewards a general equilibrium approach abstract widespread publicity of international conflict over transfrontier pollutants such as acid deposition and the november 1986 chemical spill in the rhine river has increased the public s awareness of the need to devise abatement strategies appropriate for transnational pollution this article develops a general equilibrium approach for analyzing the economic impacts of selected abatement strategies the model includes internationally mobile goods capital and pollution flows and flexible output and factor prices the general equilibrium approach provides policymakers with important information which is usually not revealed by a partial equilibrium approach that is demonstrated by applying the model to the north american acid deposition issue

the impact of environmental policy on international competitiveness in manufacturing the aim of this study is to test the hypothesis that environmental stringency adversely affects the international competitiveness net exports in manufacturing sectors the model follows the standard factor endowment approach to explain the effects of environmental regulatory policy on net exports in different product based industries an econometric model is constructed which includes factor endowments and environmental regulations to examine how strict environmental policies impact export competitiveness a panel dataset of 10 organisation for economic co operation and development oecd countries over 17 years 1987 2003 was constructed for the modelling effort the study finds that environmental regulations can be a way to combat the flight of manufacturing out of developed countries if the output from these industries can be identified as environmentally friendly a positive relationship between net exports and environmental regulations was found for paper products wood products and textile prod

corporate climate risk management are european companies prepared abstract in recent years scholars have published numerous studies dealing with the consequences of climate change for businesses activity however a more holistic understanding of companies perceptions of and responses to physical regulatory and market related climate risks across a wider range of sectors is still missing to address this gap this paper provides an empirical analysis of corporate climate risk perception and countermeasures for companies in industries regulated and not regulated by climate policy drawing on data from the carbon disclosure project of a size matched sample of 126 european based companies it is shown that most firms feel less exposed to physical and market risks than to regulatory risks this is because physical risks are expected to materialize in the more distant future and the realization of market risks is considered rather unlikely moreover the results indicate that firms in regulated industries implement more regulatory response measures than firms that are part of non regulated industries while interestingly there are no significant differences between the two groups in exposure and responses to physical and market risks by discussing climate related risks and highlighting the significant role of regulation in spurring corporate action in the context of climate change this paper holds important implications for corporate managers and policy makers

testing the pollution haven effect does the type of fdi matter many studies have tested the pollution haven effect phe which predicts that the tightening of local environmental regulations would shift foreign direct investment fdi to less regulated jurisdictions however most of them ignored the heterogeneity of fdi this paper studies the phe on local market oriented and export oriented fdi and tests whether the two types have different responsiveness to environmental regulations in a host country a simple model is developed to describe how different types of multinational companies respond in distinct ways to stricter environmental policies in host countries using us outward fdi data for 50 host countries and a survey measure of both the stringency and the enforcement of local environmental regulations i find a significant deterrent effect of local environmental regulations on inward fdi furthermore fdi in a host country is not only affected by local environmental regulations but also by environmental regulations in proximate countries more importantly accounting for the relative stringency of environmental regulations between a host country and the united states is critical for identifying a phe i find a significantly stronger effect of environmental policies on both types of fdi in host countries with environmental regulations that are stricter than those in the united states in these countries export oriented fdi also exhibits a greater sensitivity to local environmental regulations than local market oriented fdi

environmental regulation and u s state level production using data from the u s over the period 1977 1986 we estimate the impact of environmental policy on state level output using both parametric and nonparametric techniques we find that while the added flexibility of the nonparametric approach yields much insight the lack of a relationship between environmental regulation and output is quite robust

impacts of trade and the environment on clustered multilateral environmental agreements many countries align their environmental policy and environmental regulation by way of multilateral environmental agreements meas previous work in economics provided insights in the economic and political determinants of meas at large this paper distinguishes meas by the main issues covered and classifies them in five clusters biodiversity atmosphere land chemicals and hazardous wastes and seas then the role of environmental economic and political factors and of dynamic and cross cluster effects is studied at the level of mea clusters two findings stand out from this empirical analysis first economic size and multilateral trade liberalisation of countries are found to be the most important drivers of mea participation across all clusters second adjustment costs turn out to deter and in particular cross cluster spillovers turn out to stimulate mea participation across countries and clusters

assessment of regional trade and virtual water flows in china the success of china s economic development has left deep marks on resource availability and quality some regions in china are relatively poor with regards to water resources this problem is exacerbated by economic growth flourishing trade activities on both domestic and international levels have resulted in significant amounts of water withdrawal and water pollution hence the goal of this paper is to evaluate the current inter regional trade structure and its effects on water consumption and pollution via virtual water flows virtual water is the water embedded in products and used in the whole production chain and that is traded between regions or exported to other countries for this assessment of trade flows and effects on water resources we have developed an extended regional input output model for eight hydro economic regions in china to account for virtual water flows between north and south china the findings show that the current trade structure in china is not very favorable with regards to water resource allocation and efficiency north china as a water scarce region virtually exports about 5 of its total available freshwater resources while accepting large amounts of wastewater for other regions consumption by contrast south china a region with abundant water resources is virtually importing water from other regions while their imports are creating waste water polluting other regions hydro ecosystems

greenhouse gas emission controls and firm locations in north south trade this paper studies greenhouse gas emission ghg controls in the presence of international carbon leakage through international firm relocation in a new economic geography model with two countries north and south only north sets a target for ghg emissions we compare the consequences of emission quotas and emission taxes under trade liberalization on location of two manufacturing sectors with different emission intensities and degrees of carbon leakage with low trade costs further trade liberalization increases global emissions by facilitating carbon leakage regulation by quotas leads to spatial sorting resulting in less carbon leakage and less global emissions than regulation by taxes

auctions and the price of art the value of most important works of art is established by public auction either directly by an actual sale or indirectly by reference to other sales how the auction system works is thus a critical determinant of how the public s preferences are translated into the evaluation of artistic work the auction system is central in the determination of the incentives for artistic work and the efficiency of the auction system is a key determinant of the cost of creating and distributing works of art this paper contains a review of the burgeoning new research of the last decade that has been designed to shed light on how the art auction system actually works what it indicates about price formation and how well it performs we begin our discussion in section 2 with a short description of the mechanics of the auction system and then organize the remainder of our discussion around two major topics the first topic concerns how auction prices can be used to determine and compare overall price movements within the art market and other markets and the second topic concerns how the auction mechanism influences prices we

pollution havens and industrial agglomeration abstract this paper examines the pollution haven hypothesis using a spatial economy model of two countries and two sectors the manufacturing sector generates cross border pollution which reduces cross sectoral productivity of agricultural goods and lowers local income we derive a demand reducing effect that discourages firms to move to the country with laxer environmental regulations in the absence of any comparative advantage our analysis also demonstrates that manufacturing agglomeration forces can alleviate the pollution haven effect a pollution haven may not arise if environmental regulation is slightly more stringent in the larger country

environmental regulations in gravity equations evidence from europe one implication of the pollution haven hypothesis is that countries export more by applying more lenient environmental regulations most studies that apply gravity type equations do not find robust support for environmental regulations to affect bilateral exports in this paper we show that one can obtain robust negative effects of stringency as long as gravity equations are well specified with respect to theory our results based on the european data are both very consistent with us studies on environmental regulations and another line of very recent studies that infer non biased price or substitution elasticities from trade equations we show that more stringent environmental regulations when depicting a pure cost effect are reducing exports the coefficient is even larger in the case where exporting countries are central and eastern european countries comparing to the eu15 further we show that there is no significant difference in the impact of regulations on trade in case of dirty and clean sectors finally when using gmm estimation our environmental stringency coefficient gets significantly reinforced

impact of electricity prices on foreign direct investment evidence from the european union in the course of recent years growing concerns over increasing energy prices have emerged in the context of maintaining europe s international competitiveness in particular rising electricity price differentials adversely affect firms total production costs and ultimately impact their investment decisions nonetheless electricity prices as locational determinants of foreign direct investment fdi have received little attention in the literature so far we address this gap by including electricity prices in the traditional framework of fdi analysis and examine the impact of price variation on net fdi inflows in countries of the european union eu we use a panel of 27 countries for a period of 2003 2013 and system generalised method of moments gmm as method of estimation the main findings of the paper confirm that besides tax rates unit labour costs and competitive disadvantage in secondary education also electricity prices contribute to eroding competitiveness of the countries yet the effect of electricity prices does not seem to be uniform across the eu in fact southwestern countries tend to be more adversely affected than north eastern both in the short and long run

environmental regulation and u s states technical inefficiency abstract using data on 48 states from 1982 1994 we estimate the impact of environmental regulation on technical inefficiency of u s states manufacturing sector the result indicates that environmental stringency has significant and positive impacts on u s states technical inefficiency

asymmetric tax policy responses in large economies with cross border pollution we build a model of cross border pollution between two large open economies one importing the polluting good and the other exporting it and derive their non cooperative trade and environmental tax policies we show among other things that 1 in response to a bilateral reduction in trade taxes by both countries the former country s optimal policy is to lower its nash emissions tax while the latter s is to raise it and 2 in response to an increase in emissions tax rates by both countries the former country s optimal reaction is to raise its nash import tariff while the latter s is to reduce its nash export tax that is in the present context freer trade leads the exporting country to adopt stricter while the importing country laxer environmental tax policies

environmental regulations transfers and trade theory and evidence abstract this paper develops a theory of compensation of producers for the costs associated with environmental regulations we show that the existence of transfers can give counter intuitive effects of environmental policy on both output and trade flows in particular the compensation obtained by producers neutralizes the effect of environmental policy on output and consequently on trade flows this may help explain why previous empirical research has found weak evidence that environmental regulations affect trade patterns the theory is tested using agricultural sector data the evidence supports the hypothesis that environmental regulations and transfers are positively correlated

heterogeneous impacts of regulatory policy stringency on the eu electricity industry a bayesian shrinkage dynamic analysis abstract environmental and technical efficiency in the electricity sector is a major focus of regulatory policies aimed at hastening greenhouse gas reduction and lowering energy prices for final consumers understanding the impact of market and environmental regulations on efficiency is crucial for the design and choice of policy packages at the national level the productivity response to regulations depends on unobserved country specific factors that current empirical analyses have not modelled in this framework we analyse the regulation effects on efficiency in the electricity sector for a panel of european union countries we explicitly consider the effects of the environmental regulation along with the market regulation our estimation strategy uses the bayesian shrinkage estimator which can deal with the bias aggregation problem and cross country heterogeneity it allows us to identify the different transmission channels through which regulatory policy is implemented the results highlight divergent behaviours at the country level the direct impacts of the market and environmental regulatory policies on productivity are negative around 2 7 and 2 3 respectively but the countries vary in the degree to which they are able to compensate these negative effects

at a tipping point how the debate on biofuel standards sparks innovative ideas for the general future of standardisation and certification schemes abstract consumer demand for environmentally and socially responsible products is the driving force behind the expansion of competing certification systems paradoxically this has led to an increasingly crowded marketplace for labels and confusion among stakeholders such as producers retailers and buyers rather than providing clear and reliable product information as intended the situation has sparked a debate about the future of certification schemes and the need for a more streamlined system this article explores some of the innovative ideas coming from the current discussion regarding biofuel certification and standardisation and outlines how those ideas can be applied to create a global generic standard setting scheme for natural resources

is environmental efficiency trade inducing or trade hindering abstract global efforts to identify strategies for sustainable economic growth and development underline the need for understanding important links between environmental policies and international trade in this paper by constructing an environmental efficiency index for 111 countries from 1980 to 2009 we are able to empirically test for one such link an improvement in the environmental efficiency index in terms of carbon dioxide emissions reflects a decrease in the cost of efforts to mitigate the environmental costs associated with growth countries that improve their environmental efficiency are found to experience strong international trade effects both through increased exports and increased imports while the positive link between efficiency improvements and exports is supportive of the porter hypothesis the positive link between efficiency improvements and imports is supportive of strong positive income effects on account of environmental efforts these results which are robust to alternative estimation strategies lend strong support to global efforts to improve countries environmental efficiencies

trade politics and the environment tailpipe vs smokestack abstract the vast majority of economic research on environmental regulation in open economies focuses on producer generated smokestack pollution we instead consider consumer generated tailpipe pollution we examine how political opposition to environmental regulation varies with a country s trade regime and show that the impact on environmental policy of a move from autarky to free trade can depend critically on who ultimately generates pollution producers or consumers we find that opening to trade may raise industry opposition to smokestack regulation but reduce its opposition to strict tailpipe policy

environmental policy when market structure and plant locations are endogenous abstract a two region two firm model is developed in which firms choose the number and the regional locations of their plants both firms pollute and market structure is endogenous to environmental policy there are increasing returns at the plant level imperfect competition between the home and the foreign firm and transport costs between the two markets at critical levels of environmental policy variables small policy changes cause large discrete jumps in a region s pollution and welfare as a firm closes or opens a plant or shifts production to from a foreign branch plant the implications for optimal environmental policy differ significantly from those suggested by traditional pigouvian marginal analysis

the curse of the haven the impact of multinational enterprise on environmental regulation abstract we analyze the behavior of multinational enterprises in the context of resource rich and poor countries and regarding high and low income countries we depart from the pollution haven hypothesis and the resource curse the pollution haven hypothesis states that multinational enterprises move their dirty operations to countries with weak environmental regulation the resource curse holds that economic growth in countries abundant in natural resources is reduced we find that more polluting firms are relatively more often located in countries with weak environmental regulation however multinational enterprises do not have a significant impact on environmental regulation in the host country it appears that it is mainly the quality of institutions that drives both the pollution haven and the resource curse

agglomeration effects in foreign direct investment and the pollution haven hypothesis does environmental regulation impair international competitiveness of pollution intensive industries to the extent that they relocate to countries with less stringent regulation turning those countries into pollution havens we test this hypothesis using panel data on outward foreign direct investment fdi flows of various industries in the german manufacturing sector and account for several econometric issues that have been ignored in previous studies most importantly we demonstrate that externalities associated with fdi agglomeration can bias estimates away from finding a pollution haven effect if omitted from the analysis we include the stock of inward fdi as a proxy for agglomeration and employ a gmm estimator to control for endogenous time varying determinants of fdi flows furthermore we propose a difference estimator based on the least polluting industry to break the possible correlation between environmental regulatory stringency and unobservable attributes of fdi recipients in the cross section when accounting for these issues we find robust evidence of a pollution haven effect for the chemical industry

sustainability meta labelling an effective measure to facilitate more sustainable consumption and production abstract arguably one of the most prominent measures to facilitate more sustainable consumption and production has been the instrument of product labelling but with a plethora of labelling schemes having been implemented by various actors over the last decade many now accuse them of being confusing rather than facilitating as a result governments in france uk and germany as well as businesses such as walmart and non governmental organisations like wwf have begun to consider seriously the implementation of some form of meta scheme that condenses existing product labels and other communication measures into an overarching sustainability message yet so far in depth studies on the potential institutionalisation of a sustainability meta labelling scheme are missing drawing upon a novel theoretically integrative framework that combines theoretical arguments of constructivist institutionalism and institutional entrepreneurship with the concept of legitimacy this paper addresses this gap by exploring how the notion of sustainability meta labelling has so far been discussed and investigating the prospects for such an overarching scheme to become institutionalised empirically the paper bases on documentary analysis and elite interviews focussed on case studies of four existing product labelling schemes eu ecolabel eu energy label marine stewardship council and fairtrade label as well as the notion of sustainability meta labelling legitimacy constructions are demonstrated rather than shown to be highly dynamic and oftentimes inherently conflicting many of these conflicts thereby appear to be likely to increase rather than decrease with the implementation of an overarching sustainability meta labelling scheme in a sense this study shows that the very issue that is claimed to drive the establishment of a sustainability meta labelling scheme the different interpretations of the sustainable development concept through different product labels might in fact pose one of the main challenges for its institutionalisation and effectiveness in facilitating more sustainable consumption and production

environmental regulation and foreign direct investment evidence from south korea abstract this paper studies how environmental regulation shapes the pattern of foreign direct investment fdi and thereby assesses the pollution haven hypothesis conflicting results exist in the case studies examining the most advanced countries partly due to the deterrent effect of clean technology adoptions on industry migration to minimize the clean technology effect we examine the pattern of south korean fdi over 2000 2007 the period that korean firms relied on old production technologies despite facing rapidly strengthened environmental standards a difference in differences type identification strategy circumvents other potential confounders we find strong evidence that polluting industries tend to invest more in countries with laxer environmental regulations in terms of both the amount of investment intensive margin and the number of new foreign affiliates extensive margin a similar finding is obtained when imports are analyzed

on the use of expectations data in estimating structural dynamic choice models despite the importance of expectations in models of decision behavior under uncertainty few empirical economists have made use of subjective expectations data in estimating such models assuming that expectations about future behavior accurately portray optimal future behavior conditional on current information it is shown that such data can provide similar information about the decision process as can data on current or retrospective behavior the value of self reported choice expectations is illustrated by using information on respondents expected future occupation in the estimation of a structural dynamic model of teacher career decisions under uncertainty

shifting chinese organizational responses to evolving greening pressures organizations are facing various evolving pressures to green their practices these pressures range from obligatory forces to voluntary measures environmental pressures traditionally influenced organizations to seek reactive and internal practices the adopted environmental management em practices have evolved to be more proactive and external as the focus has shifted to supply chains this paper aims to further understand the driving mechanisms for em practices under various external pressures to meet this research goal this study extends the theory of dynamic incentives of environmental policies and institutional theory to develop environmental pressures using an empirical study of 422 chinese manufacturers covering all 31 provinces and provincial cities an exploratory factor analysis reveals four em practices factors and four pressures drivers factors results of a hierarchical regression analysis show that coercive pressures positively relate to more reactive internal em practices less coercive pressures positively relate to more proactive external and green supply chain management practices the empirical findings provide further support that voluntary regulatory measures can help motivate companies in extending their em efforts to supply chains the work also provides insights into how organizations may respond to evolving regulatory regimes dynamic incentives of environmental regulatory policy and various institutional pressures