environmental regulation and u s economic growth in this article we quantify the costs of pollution controls by reporting the results of simulations of the growth of the u s economy with and without regulation for this purpose we have constructed a detailed model of the economy that includes the determinants of long term growth we have also analyzed the interaction between industries in order to capture the full repercussions of environmental regulations however we have not attempted to assess the benefits resulting from a cleaner environment we find that pollution abatement has emerged as a major claimant on the resources of the u s economy the cost of emission controls is more than 10 of the total cost of government purchases of goods and services

environmental regulation industrial innovation and green development of chinese manufacturing based on an extended cdm model abstract as for the academics and policymakers more attention has been given to the issue on how to drive green development of the manufacturing through regulations and innovations we construct the extended crepon duguet mairesse cdm model and employ the panel data of chinese manufacturing industries during 2003 2014 to examine the effects of environmental regulation on industrial innovation and green development the findings reveal that 1 in the long term environmental regulation has crowded out r d investment 2 environmental regulation has inhibited patent outputs so that the weak version of porter hypothesis is not underpinned 3 in the short term environmental regulation has promoted the improvements of labor productivity energy efficiency and environmental efficiency in the manufacturing industry excluding green total factor productivity gtfp whereas in the long term environmental regulation only has increased energy efficiency while it has obstructed labor productivity which provides no support for the strong version of porter hypothesis 4 different innovation outputs have distinct influences on labor productivity energy efficiency environmental efficiency and gtfp finally this paper provides pertinent policy implications

on the demographic composition of colleges and universities in market equilibrium achieving diversity in the racial and ethnic makeup of the student body is one of the objectives that a college pursues in making decisions about admission and financial aid there has been a tremendous amount of debate about policies that colleges should adopt or be proscribed from adopting with respect to diversity rather than join this largely normative debate we adopt a positive focus investigating how colleges quests for ethnic and racial diversity affect admission and financial aid policies the college quality hierarchy and the distribution of whites and nonwhite students across colleges of differing qualities we provide a theoretical framework for investigating the effects of preferences for diversity augmented with results from a parallel computational model calibrated to u s data the effects of efforts to achieve diversity in colleges depend not only on the weight that colleges give to diversity but also on the value that prospective students place on diversity diversity may be of concern to no one only to colleges to both colleges and students or to colleges and a subset of students we first describe a baseline model without preferences for diversity and then examine three alternatives in which preferences for racial diversity are present

the efficiency and equity consequences of two part tariffs in electricity pricing ahstrat t this paper evaluates electricity two part tariffs with both efficiency and equity criteria the efficiency of tariffs is analyzed by studying the relation between price and marginal cost for both customer connection and variable output the equity of tariffs is addressed by an analysis of cross subsidization to address these issues this paper presents a multiproduct cost function that can provide information on output and connection marginal costs for each customer class using a 1980 cross section of electric utilities it is shown that prices are not set in a first best efficient manner and least favor the commercial class

separability functional form and regulatory policy in models of interfuel substitution abstract counter intuitive results such as positive own price elasticities have been found in some studies of interfuel substitution this paper examines three possible reasons for this problem first including energy materials in petroleum and coal aggregates is found to contribute to incorrect signs second the mathematical properties of the translog function contribute to concavity violations in contrast the linear logit model of cost shares is found to provide more sensible estimates of own price elasticities across alternative model specifications finally natural gas curtailment policies and environmental regulations are found to be significant factors influencing us industrial fuel demand although omission of these factors does not directly contribute to curvature violations

federal environmental policy and local industrial diversification the case of the clean air act carr d and yan w federal environmental policy and local industrial diversification the case of the clean air act regional studies air quality regulations under the clean air act alter local industrial diversification by reducing concentration in polluting sectors of the economy for non attainment areas using comprehensive county level data covering the entire united states over a period of twenty six years this study finds an important connection between air quality regulations and local industrial diversification in both non attainment areas and jurisdictions that have gained attainment status non attainment status for ozone carbon monoxide co or sulphur dioxide so2 brings about significant decreases in local industrial specialization furthermore these effects persist after attainment status has been gained for ozone carbon monoxide or sulphur dioxide carr d et yan w la politique federale pour l environnement et la diversification industrielle locale etude de cas de la loi antipollut

does environmental regulation affect energy efficiency in china s thermal power generation empirical evidence from a slacks based dea model abstract data envelopment analysis dea has gained much popularity in performance measurement of power industry this paper presents a slack based measure approach to investigating the relationship between fossil fuel consumption and the environmental regulation of china s thermal power generation we first calculate the total factor energy efficiency without considering environmental constraints an environmental performance indicator is proposed through decomposing the total factor energy efficiency the proposed approach is then employed to examine whether environmental regulation affects the energy efficiency of china s thermal power generation we find that the environmental efficiency plays a significant role in affecting energy performance of china s thermal generation sector decreasing the discharge of major pollutants can improve both energy performance and environmental efficiency besides we also have three main findings 1 the energy efficiency and environmental efficiency were relatively low 2 the energy and environmental efficiency scores show great variations among provinces 3 both energy efficiency and environmental efficiency are of obvious geographical characteristics according to our findings we suggest some policy implications

environmental regulations and productivity growth the case of fossil fueled electric power generation this paper measures and analyzes the effect of sulfur dioxide emission restrictions on the rate of productivity growth in the electric power industry over the 1973 79 business cycle a firm specific measure of regulatory intensity is developed which depends on the severity of the emission standard the extent of enforcement and the unconstrained emission rate relevant to each utility the results indicate that emission regulations result in significantly higher generating costs primarily from the increased use of low sulfur fuels the average rate of productivity growth was reduced by 0 59 percentage points per year for constrained utilities

the effects of environmental regulation on china s total factor productivity an empirical study of carbon intensive industries abstract in this paper we first identify china s carbon intensive industries ciis by constructing a carbon intensive index taking both the scale and intensity of co2 emission into account then the strong version of porter hypothesis ph i e the positive effect of environmental regulation on total factor productivity tfp of china s ciis is tested in order to overcome the endogenous issue of model specification two stage least squares 2sls method is employed the results indicate that there is a significant inverted u shape relationship between environmental regulation intensity and the tfp of china s ciis demonstrating the inexistence of strong ph effect in a long run and the impact of environmental regulation on ciis is changing gradually from innovation offsets to compliance costs in addition optimal environmental regulation intensities for different ciis are also studied according to their locations on the inverted u shaped curve the production and supply of electric power and heat power industry has exceeded the optimal environmental regulation intensity while the remaining ciis have not reached their inflection points therefore specific policy proposals should be formulated according to the different stages of environmental regulation in various industries

a general equilibrium analysis of state and private colleges and access to higher education in the u s abstract we develop a general equilibrium model of the market for undergraduate higher education that captures the coexistence of public and private colleges the large degree of quality differentiation among them and the tuition and admission policies that emerge from their competition for students a quantitative version of the model matches well estimates of enrollment elasticities variation in need based and merit based institutional aid with respectively student income and ability and aggregate characteristics of u s higher education including college attendance in public and private schools tuition levels and the provision of federal aid predictions about the provision of federal aid and the distribution of students across colleges by ability and income match the empirical counterparts well we use the model to examine the consequences of federal and state aid policies a one third increase in the maximum federal aid increases college attendance by 6 of the initial college population most of the increase being in state colleges and mainly of poor students elite private colleges reduce institutional aid and use the net funding gain to spend more on educational inputs and to substitute some highly able poor students for less able rich students reductions in federal or state aid result in substantially reduced attendance mainly by poor students reductions of support to state colleges induce private colleges to increase enrollments modestly and improve in quality as demand shifts toward them

educational vouchers and cream skimming educational vouchers and cream skimming epple and romano 1998 show equilibrium provision of education by public and private schools has the latter skim off the wealthiest and most able students and universal vouchers lead to further cream skimming here we study voucher design that injects private school competition and increases technical efficiencies without cream skimming conditioning vouchers on student ability without restriction on participating schools policies fails to affect significantly cream skimming however by adding restrictions like tuition constraints such vouchers can reap the benefits of school competition without increased stratification this is accomplished while allowing voluntary participation in the voucher system and without tax increases

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

energy saving power generation dispatching in china regulations pilot projects and policy recommendations a review abstract environmental protection and climate change have become one of the most important issues of great concern consequently improving energy efficiency and developing renewable energy have also become the fundamental energy policies of all countries around the world china has put forward the ambitious goal to speed up the construction of the resource conserving and environmentally friendly society in copenhagen global warming summit held in november 2009 china made a solemn commitment by 2020 the co 2 emissions per unit of gdp i e carbon intensity will decrease by 40 to 45 compared with that in 2005 therefore increasing energy efficiency reducing energy consumption and protecting environment will undoubtedly become the urgent task in china hence energy saving and emission reduction prove to be the developing trend the energy saving power generation dispatching espgd measures trial printed by national development and reform commission ndrc was required to carry out energy saving power generation dispatching so as to maximize the environmental benefits which the renewable energy and other clean energy create minimize the energy consumption and pollutant emissions and promote the secure efficient and clean electric power system the implementation of espgd is facing enormous challenges both in technology and in regulations how to realize the balance among energy conservation environmental protection and economic efficiency under the premise of secure and stable system operation and how to promote the effective implementation through the policy measures are the key problems to be resolved urgently for china to thoroughly carry out espgd this paper introduces the concept of espgd elaborates the influences of espgd on the entire electric power industry discusses the situation and comparison of espgd in the pilot provinces and puts forward technical and policy suggestions for the effective implementation of espgd

environmental policy design innovation and efficiency gains in electricity generation this paper explores the relationship between environmental regulation innovation and competitiveness drawing upon a unique dataset on environmental regulations directed at combustion plants a global dataset of power plants and a global dataset of environmental patents the analysis is conducted in two stages first a nonparametric frontier analysis is implemented to estimate efficiency scores including a measure of technological innovation based on patent stocks second econometric methods are applied to analyse the role of policy stringency and policy design on efficiency our estimation sample covers thermal power plant sectors in 20 countries from 1990 to 2009 the results show that the stringency of environmental regulations is a significant determinant of productive efficiency with respect to pollutant emissions as well as fuel use however these effects turn negative once the level of stringency leaps over a certain threshold in addition the paper concludes that the positive effect of regulatory stringency can be diminished by a negative effect of regulatory differentiation with measures which are differentiated across plant size and age having negative consequences and these effects are increasing over time this finding is important given the prevalence of size and vintage differentiated policies in many countries finally it is found that integrated approaches to environmental innovation are more likely to bring about efficiency improvements than end of pipe technologies

voluntary compliance with market based environmental policy evidence from the u s acid rain program the u s acid rain program implemented a nationwide market for electric utilities sulfur dioxide so2 emissions and included voluntary compliance possibilities for nonaffected sources i observe significant voluntary participation albeit with small impact on the so2 market mostly from sources with counterfactual emissions below their allowance allocations an ex post analysis suggests that costs from the resulting higher emissions outweigh savings from shifts in emissions reductions from high cost affected sources to low cost nonaffected sources further utilities voluntary participation is well explained by economic variables which provides new evidence of cost effective compliance strategies and low transaction costs

different types of environmental regulations and heterogeneous influence on green productivity evidence from china this paper attempts to examine if the strong version of porter hypothesis is supported in china by investigating how different regulatory instruments and the relative stringency impact green productivity we use a slacks based measure sbm and luenberger productivity index accounting for undesirable outputs to evaluate the industrial green productivity growth rates of china s 30 provinces the estimates imply an unsustainable development model in china with significant regional differences by employing a panel threshold model and a province level panel dataset during 2000 2012 empirical results show that both command and control and market based regulation have a non linear relationship with and can be positively related to green productivity but with different constrains on regulation stringency there are double thresholds with the command and control and exists an optimal range of stringency for productivity improvement while a single threshold has been found with the market based regulation and its current stringency is reasonable for most of provinces moreover based on china s reality the productivity effect driven by market based regulation is much stronger than that of the command and control the mechanism of informal regulation is much more complicated consequently we find evidence to support the strong porter hypothesis that reasonable stringency of environmental regulations may enhance rather than lower industrial competitiveness

spatial competition and the price of college i introduction over the last half century the u s higher educational system has been transformed from a collection of local independent college fiefdoms into a regionally and nationally integrated market in which universities compete for both resources and students as in hoxby 1997a concurrently duffy and goldberg 1998 contend that the most salient feature of the u s higher education market has been tuition increases that exceed both the rate of inflation and income growth combined with financial aid packages that increasingly emphasize merit over need the rising real cost of college in the midst of growing competition has become a source of considerable angst for parents university administrators and public policy analysts who are concerned that need blind admission goals are being sacrificed in favor of strategic enrollment management policies designed to attract the best and the brightest thus mcpherson and shapiro 1998 have asked if the rapidly rising cost of college begs the question of whether universities compete on price as opposed to some other metric such as reputation or resources this article is the first to empirically examine price setting practices among universities by questioning whether list tuitions i e the posted price or net tuitions i e the posted price minus financial aid of private universities respond to the geographic and qualitative proximity of competitors there are theoretical reasons to expect that the increasing integration of the higher education sector might affect tuitions particularly for selective private universities that are relatively unfettered by outside pricing constraints as discussed in bowen 1967 for example hoxby 1997b models integration as the opening of trade among autarkic colleges of varying quality trade is found to reduce the monopsony power of universities over local consumers and intensify their competition for high quality students who because they are both inputs into and consumers of a college education can improve institutional quality thus despite applicant pools well in excess of the number of enrollment slots ehrenberg 2000 has documented that most selective and well endowed institutions increasingly spend significant sums recruiting top applicants and use a combination of enrollment management tools such as merit aid early decision policies and campus amenities to lure top applicants to enroll the advent of individual college rankings further raised the enrollment management stakes by providing an easily observed quality metric as this measure has been found in monks and ehrenberg 1999 to influence a student s college choice one may anticipate that select institutions may have been afforded an ability to ramp up their list tuitions using their substantial endowments and the tuition revenue collected from the most financially able students to price discriminate in favor of needy academically able students as discussed in cook and frank 1993 ehrenberg and rizzo 2004 and hill winston and boyd 2004 nonetheless heller 2004 notes that the collective impact of such enrollment management practices in higher education as a whole is of particular policy concern because empirical evidence suggests needy students increasingly rely on non need based aid often in the form of loans to finance their college educations on the other hand a number of studies including those of allen and shen 1999 moore et al 1991 and parker and summers 1993 have documented that less selective private institutions also appear to be cognizant that their more selective competitors have greater resources and deeper applicant pools which yield greater demand elasticities for these institutions moreover as discussed in kane and orszag 2003 and rizzo 2004 less selective private institutions must increasingly ward off the potential flight of students to lower cost public institutions that have also been forced to manage enrollments in response to declining state government support

pricing for the clean air evidence from chinese housing market abstract air pollution is widely believed to cause healthy risks and influence nations economic dimensions this paper investigates the impact of air pollution on housing prices in china s 286 prefectural level cities during 2005 2013 to address the endogeneity problem of pm2 5 concentrations in our regression we propose an instrument variable strategy based on ventilation coefficient the estimation results suggest that a 10 increase in pm2 5 concentrations causes a 2 4 reduction in local housing prices air pollution also hinders the progress of urbanization limits cities human capital formation and changes people s expectations of housing prices that we interpret as three potential mechanisms behind our main findings

environmental innovations and firm profitability unmasking the porter hypothesis we examine impacts of different types of environmental innovations on firm profits following porter s sci am 264 4 168 1991 hypothesis that environmental regulation can improve firms competitiveness we distinguish between regulation induced and voluntary environmental innovations we find that innovations which do not improve firms resource efficiency do not provide positive returns to profitability however innovations that increase a firm s resource efficiency in terms of material or energy consumption per unit of output have a positive impact on profitability this positive result holds for both regulation induced and voluntary innovations although the effect is greater for regulation driven innovation we conclude that the porter hypothesis does not hold in general for its strong version but depends on the type of environmental innovation our findings rest on firm level data from the german part of the community innovation survey 2008 cis 2008

early decision and financial aid competition among need blind colleges and universities abstract this paper presents a stylized theoretical model of competition among need blind colleges and universities that implement early decision admissions under need blind admissions an applicant s financial aid status cannot affect their likelihood of admission in the model a need blind school can use early decision admissions as a screening mechanism to indirectly identify a student s ability to pay while superficially maintaining a need blind policy as a result in equilibrium non financial aid students are more likely to be admitted than financial aid students of comparable quality

effects of local and civil environmental regulation on green total factor productivity in china a spatial durbin econometric analysis this paper employs metafrontier malmquist luenberger index and a spatial durbin model to investigate the influence of both local and civil environmental regulation and its spatial spillover effect on green total factor productivity in 273 cities of china in 2003 2013 according to city political attribute and regional differences this article divides the sample city into six categories the results show that effect of local environmental regulation on green total factor productivity is significantly positive in high political attribute cities a1 and a2 zone but negative effects in lower political attribute cities b2 and b3 zone moreover the race to the top results in significantly positive spatial spillover effects from local environmental regulation on green total factor productivity in high political attribute cities a1 and a2 zone while the race to the bottom causes significantly negative spatial spillover effects in lower political attribute cities b2 and b3 zone as for civil environmental regulation it has positive direct and indirect effects in promoting green total factor productivity we further find that environmental regulation inhibits the original technological innovation of enterprises which suggests that government should reduce market intervention improve enterprise flexibility of market change and promote enterprises to carry out the original technological innovation thus the government and citizen should make targeted pollution reduction policies for the green total factor productivity increase

how environmental regulations affect innovation in the australian oil and gas industry going beyond the porter hypothesis the impact of environmental regulation on innovation is of central interest to many industries and policy makers alike while traditional research adopts a top down view of regulation and attempts to measure the innovation response the more bottom up view of contemporary theory argues that firms produce innovations that exceed compliance levels as a competitive strategy we approach this dichotomy by investigating innovation introduced by australian oil and gas firms in light of environmental regulatory compliance burden and firm level characteristics including competitive capabilities analyses of survey responses executive level interviews and conference proceedings reveal both regulatory top down and competitive advantage bottom up perspectives explain innovation in this industry regression analyses reveal that product service and novel innovations all types are related to a high compliance burden competitive skills research and development activity and engagement in formal collaborations interview and conference data add nuance to our findings revealing collaborative compliance frameworks result in similar innovation outcomes

comparative statics of a monopolistic firm facing price cap and command and control environmental regulations abstract an exhaustive comparative statics analysis of a model of a monopolistic firm facing price cap regulation and a variety of commonly implemented command and control environmental regulations is carried out the comparative statics are intrinsic to each of the models and thus form their basic empirically testable properties several unanticipated results emerge from the analysis in particular it is shown that a subset of the intrinsic comparative statics are qualitatively invariant to all of the commonly employed command and control environmental regulations that a price cap regulated profit maximizing monopoly might face while others are specific to the type of command and control environmental regulation in place

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

export performance and productivity growth the case of taiwan the hypothesis that rapid growth of exports accelerates economic growth has been widely discussed and tested the empirical evidence that supports the hypothesis includes studies by m michaely b balassa p heller and r porter w tyler g feder r kavoussi and r ram using macrodata and m nishimizu and s robinson using two digit industry level data feder found that exports contribute to economic growth because the export sector is not only more productive than the nonexport sector but also generates some external effects that enhance the productivity of the nonexport sector as exports expand both the resource reallocation effect and externality effect lead to an economy wide productivity increase nishimizu and robinson also found the existence of a significant correlation between productivity growth and export expansion on a theoretical level there are at least two interpretations of the correlation between productivity growth and export expansion one stresses scale economies the other stresses competitive forces the scale economies argument emphasizes the benefits that can be derived by means of expanding the scale of operations in the case of countries whose domestic markets are small in size exporting becomes an essential part of achieving scale economies j bhagwati considered scale economies to be a plausible explanation for the superiority of the export promotion trade strategy as opposed to the import substitution trade strategy but warned against the lack of convincing evidence 2 the study by j kwon on the korean manufacturing industry also found that scale economies are a main factor contributing to total fac

the role of registered retirement savings plans in a life cycle model in this paper a distinction is made between two types of personal saving one of which is tax deductible and another which is not and the role of each is examined within the framework of a life cycle model more precisely the model shows how tax deductible rrsp saving enables the individual to do his own lifetime income averaging for tax purposes in order to generate the lifetime profile of taxable income which minimizes the discounted value of tax payments the use of rrsps for this purpose however does not usually result in income averaging in the conventional sense since it is not necessarily optimal for a person to equalize taxable income over each period of his lifetime by contrast non tax deductible saving permits the individual to choose his optimal lifetime consumption path and bequests le ro le des regimes enregistres d epargne retraite dans un modele d optimisation sur tout le cycle de vie dans ce m6moire l auteur distingue deux types d 6pargne personnelle l une d6ductible aux fins de l impot sur le revenu et l autre non le role de chacune est analyse dans le contexte d un modele d optimisation sur tout le cycle de vie plus pr6cis6ment le modele montre comment l 6pargne via les r6gimes enregistr6s d 6pargne retraite permet a l individu d 6taler son revenu total dans le temps aux fins d imp6t afin de construire un profil de revenu imposable qui minimise la valeur pr6sente des impots pay6s l utilisation des r6gimes enregistr6s d 6pargne retraite h cette fin n engendre pas necessairement un 6talement conventionnel du revenu puisqu il se peut fort bien qu il ne soit pas optimal pour l individu d 6galiser son revenu imposable pour chaque p6riode de sa vie d autre part l 6pargne qui n est pas d6ductible aux fins d impot sur le revenu permet h l individu de choisir le sentier optimal de consommation et de legs sur tout le cycle de vie

the effect of within sector upstream and downstream energy taxes on innovation and productivity the aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of environmental regulatory stringency on innovation and productivity using a panel of 8 european countries for 13 manufacturing sectors over the years 2001 2007 this research topic falls under the heading of the porter hypothesis ph of which different versions have been tested we consider both the strong and the weak versions of the ph while also adding some peculiar features to the analysis firstly we assess the role played by environmental taxes that is an instrument rarely tested as a factor which can support the ph secondly we analyse not only the effect of environmental taxes within a given sector within sector but also the role played by environmental taxes in upstream and downstream sectors in terms of input output relationships thirdly we test these relationships also indirectly by verifying whether innovation is one of the channels through which higher sectoral productivity can be achieved by imposing tighter environmental regulations our main findings suggest that downstream stringency is the most relevant driver of innovation and productivity while within sector regulations only affect productivity but not innovation moreover the effect of regulations on productivity is mostly direct while the part of the effect mediated by induced innovations as measured by patents is relevant only for what concerns downstream regulations

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

differential environmental regulation effects on electric utility capital turnover and emissions this paper tests the hypothesis that differential regulations reduced the rate of capital turnover in the electric utility industry resulting in increased emissions of sulfur dioxide based on a sample of forty four privately owned electric utilities operating over the period 1969 83 the authors results indicate that 1 regulation increased the age of capital by an average of 3 29 years 24 6 percent 2 increases in the age of capital have no statistically significant impact on emissions and 3 in the absence of regulation emissions would have increased by 3 79 tons per million kwhs 34 6 percent copyright 1993 by mit press

economies of scale and utilization in electricity generation in kuwait cost structure of electricity generation in kuwait has been examined with specific focus on the economies of scale and utilization this has been done by estimating a translog variable cost function using time series data covering the period from 1965 to 1990 the results indicate the existence of diseconomies of scale in the generation of electricity but no economies or diseconomies of utilization

environmental productivity and kuznets curve in india abstract as a result of india s extremely rapid economic growth the scale and seriousness of environmental problems are no longer in doubt whether pollution abatement technologies are utilized more efficiently is crucial in the analysis of environmental management because it influences the cost of alternative production and pollution abatement technologies in this study we use state level industry data of sulfur dioxide nitrogen dioxide and suspended particular matter over the period 1991 2003 employing recently developed productivity measurement technique we show that overall environmental productivities decrease over time in india furthermore we analyze the determinants of environmental productivities and find environmental kuznets curve type relationship existences between environmental productivity and income panel analysis results show that the scale effect dominates over the technique effect therefore a combined effect of income on environmental productivity is negative

strategic quality competition and the porter hypothesis abstract this paper offers new support for the porter hypothesis within the context of a quality competition framework we use a duopoly model of vertical product differentiation in which two firms simultaneously choose to produce either a high environmentally friendly quality or low standard quality variant of a good before engaging in price competition in this simple setting we show that a nash equilibrium of the game featuring the low quality good can be pareto dominated by a different strategy profile in which both firms opt in favour of the green product our analysis demonstrates that in such a case both firms stand to profit from the introduction of a rule penalizing any firm refusing to produce the environmentally friendly product we also find that consumers themselves may benefit from such regulations this is always the case when shifting from low quality to high quality production brings about a cost efficiency improvement

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

the market impact and the cost of environmental policy evidence from the swedish green car rebate we quantify the effects of the swedish gcr a program to reduce oil dependence and greenhouse gas emissions in the automobile industry we find the gcr to increase the market shares of green cars and its cost to be 109 tonco2 saved thus 5 times the price of an emission permit since the main green cars in sweden are ffvs flexible fuel vehicles which can switch between petrol gasoline and ethanol we also account for fuel choice which increases the cost of the program finally we show that consumers would have purchased ffvs regardless of the rebate provided by the gcr

productivity scale economies and technical change reconsidered recently several writers have presented theoretical arguments and empirical evidence that suggests that an electric utility s long run productivity growth rate can be decomposed into a variety of factors for example gollop and roberts 12 decompose a utility s total factor productivity growth rate into three distinct components 1 technical change 2 a scale effect and 3 an environmental regulatory factor results for the 1970s indicate that declining rates of technical change and output growth coupled with increased regulatory intensity lead to a noticeable decline in the firm s long run productivity growth rate similarly nelson and wohar 15 examine the impact of technical change scale economies and rate of return regulation on an electric utility s longrun productivity growth rate evidence suggests that the technical change and scale components behaved in a manner similar to the gollop and roberts 12 findings the evidence concerning the impact of the regulatory factor was less convincing due to the difficulty in obtaining reliable estimates of the regulatory constraint parameter a common characteristic of this literature is that the firms under investigation are assumed to employ all inputs at their long run cost minimizing levels as such the productivity decomposition model is primarily concerned with distinguishing between shifts in the production function versus movements along the production structure according to caves christensen and swanson 5 a violation of the long run equilibrium assumption adds an equally important factor to the decomposition of productivity growth specifically the movement toward or away from longrun equilibrium as a consequence researchers must further distinguish between long run and short run productivity growth estimates 2 in a recent article 9 daly and rao illustrate theoretically and empirically using a long run cost function and data pertaining to ontario hydro that a firm s long run productivity growth rate can be decomposed into 1 technical change 2 non constant returns to scale and 3 a capacity

environmental regulations environmental governance efficiency and the green transformation of china s iron and steel enterprises abstract based on micro level enterprise panel data from 2005 to 2014 a slack based global data envelopment analysis dea model and a global malmquist luenberger index model are used to calculate the environmental governance efficiency ege of china s iron and steel enterprises ises then the different effects of two types of environmental regulation on ege of china s ises are analysed the results show that the overall level of ege for china s ises has remained low over the past 10 years the total factor environmental governance efficiency tfege presents a decreasing trend from 2005 to 2014 and the decline in tfege is mainly attributed to the technical progress change index gtpch moreover the bootstrap dea method is used for bias correction and the correction efficiency values are all within the confidence interval improving the accuracy of ege evaluation the regression analysis results show that different types of environmental regulations exert heterogeneous effects on tfege the relationship between market incentive environmental regulation and tfege has an inverted u shaped implying that although market incentive environmental regulation may improve the tfege in the short term continuously increasing this intensity would inhibit it however command control environmental regulation and tfege have a positive but not significant relationship

environmental regulations and market power the case of the korean manufacturing industries abstract in korea economic growth between 1980 and the mid 1990s was barely affected by environmental regulations it could be the case that industries with more market power exercised more political power which was translated into less expensive regulation e g less rigorous monitoring or enforcement efforts in this paper we test a negative relationship between market power and the contribution of environmental regulations to productivity growth a restricted cost function is jointly estimated with an inverse supply relation to measure the productivity growth effect of regulations and the degree of market power in 15 sub industries in the korean manufacturing industries over the period 1983 93

can a carbon trading system promote the transformation of a low carbon economy under the framework of the porter hypothesis empirical analysis based on the psm did method abstract global warming is one of the issues of great concern in the world the large scale use of fossil fuels has led to the continuous increase in carbon emissions resulting in global energy shortages and environmental pollution reasonable and strict environmental regulation promotes technological innovation by enterprises to achieve a win win situation between the economy and environment which is the core idea of the porter hypothesis the choice of china as the world s largest energy consumer and carbon emitter is not only related to the country s own mode of economic growth but also determines the development of the world s low carbon economy we used the panel data from 2000 to 2016 of 30 provincial level administrative regions in china and adopted the propensity score matching difference in differences method to test the impact of china s carbon trading pilot system on the transformation of a low carbon economy the empirical results show that under the constraints of the established resources and environment there is a positive relationship to some extent between china s carbon trading system and low carbon economic transformation this relationship can realize the win win situation of environmental and economic benefits as advocated by the porter hypothesis and further verify the applicability of the porter hypothesis

plant vintage technology and environmental regulation abstract we use data on productivity and pollution abatement costs at individual pulp and paper mills to test whether the impact of environmental regulation on productivity differs by plant vintage and technology plants with higher pollution abatement costs have significantly lower productivity levels this relationship differs greatly based on a plant s technology with productivity at integrated mills being greatly affected by abatement costs while the impact at non integrated mills is negligible plant vintage does not seem to matter with older and newer plants showing similar impacts reported abatement costs appear to substantially understate the true costs of abatement accounting for the impact of technology differences makes some difference in the estimated overall impact of environmental regulation

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

greenwash vs brownwash exaggeration and undue modesty in corporate sustainability disclosure corporate greenwashing has accelerated in recent years bringing in its wake growing skepticism about corporate green claims although a theory of the drivers and deterrents of greenwashing has begun to emerge it is static in nature and does not incorporate the full range of ways in which firms can misrepresent their environmental performance our contribution is threefold first we extend the theory of organizational information disclosure to incorporate the possibility of undue modesty about a firm s environmental social and governance practices second we hypothesize about the drivers of exaggeration and undue modesty based on which of a firm s stakeholders are salient at a given point in time to do so we place the firm within a dynamic context that has largely been missing in the prior literature third we test our hypotheses using a data set that allows us to directly compare corporate green claims against actual performance results reveal that corporate output growth deregulation and low profits under deregulation significantly affect the choice between greenwashing and brownwashing the effects of growth and profits are mitigated by external scrutiny

the impacts of the clean air act on production cost and the substitution between inputs in the electric utility industry abstract the paper examines how having to comply with phase 1 of title iv of the 1990 clean air act affected production cost and the substitution between fuel and non fuel labor capital inputs phase 1 required firms to reduce their sulfur dioxide emissions enacting procedures to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions using lower sulfur content coal or other fuel sources could lead to higher cost and impact the substitution between fuel and non fuel inputs using a 1992 2000 panel of 34 u s electric utilities empirical results indicate that the procedures electric utilities enacted to comply with phase 1 contributed to small increases in both marginal cost and total cost firms having to comply with phase 1 were more willing than firms not subject to phase 1 to substitute from fuel to non fuel labor capital inputs following an increase in the price of fuel utilities subject to phase 1 that had a fuel clause were more willing than phase 1 firms without a fuel clause to substitute from non fuel inputs to fuel when the price of the non fuel input increased

structural innovation and efficiency effects of environmental regulation evidence from china s carbon emissions trading pilot conventional wisdom argues that environmental regulation can trigger both structural adjustments and enhanced innovation we test this conjecture by using a difference in differences approach to analyze the impacts of china s carbon emission trading cet pilot policy on energy consumption we find that compliance with the cet regulation has triggered statistically significant adjustments in energy structure industrial structure and technological innovation adjustments in industrial structure also contribute to enhanced total factor energy efficiency whereas increased technological innovation has mixed effects on energy efficiency we show that in the short run government led innovation does not immediately contribute to improvement in energy efficiency whereas enterprise led innovation has a negative impact it indicates that cet regulation can affect energy efficiency through industrial structure and technological innovation overall our results provide new evidence for the strong version of the porter hypothesis our results also provide strong scientific support for china s recent transition towards market based carbon mitigation strategies

the costs of water pollution regulation in the pulp and paper industry this paper studies plant level data on actual and permitted levels of water pollution emissions for the pulp and paper industry there is widespread and substantial overcompliance with the relevant regulations aggregate bod emissions in 1992 were only 50 of the amount allowed overcompliance appears to imply a zero marginal abatement cost and its prevalence therefore has the potential to substantially change the debate over the costs of regulation we show instead that plants incurred substantial costs to overcomply marginal abatement costs were roughly 13 000 ton in 1992 we discuss possible explanations for costly overcompliance and their implications for estimation

the effects of environmental regulation and technical progress on co2 kuznets curve an evidence from china based on environmental kuznets curve theory a panel data model which takes environmental regulation and technical progress as its moderating factors was developed to analyse the institutional and technical factors that affect the path of low carbon economic development the results indicated that there was a co2 emission kuznets curve seen in china environmental regulation had a significant moderating effect on the curve and the inflection of co2 emissions could come substantially earlier under stricter environmental regulation meanwhile the impact of technical progress on the low carbon economic development path had a longer hysteresis effect but restrained co2 emission during its increasing stage and accelerated its downward trend during the decreasing stage which was conducive to emission reduction strict environmental regulation could force the high carbon emitting industries to transfer from the eastern regions to the central or the western regions of china which would make the co2 kuznets curve higher in its increasing stage and lower in its decreasing stage than that under looser regulation furthermore energy efficiency energy structure and industrial structure exerted a significant direct impact on co2 emissions we should consider the above factors as essential in the quest for low carbon economic development

natural versus manufactured capital win lose or win win a case study of the finnish pulp and paper industry abstract the effect of investments on environmental variables has been discussed through the win win rhetoric specifically in micro level analysis on the macro level the win win rhetoric has been replaced by the arguments for and against the substitutability of natural and manufactured capital here these two concepts belonging to different levels of analysis are linked by looking at the environmental and economic effects of chosen investment strategies in a traditionally capital intensive industry over time the paper shows that rather than generalise the existence of win win situations or the substitutability of capital these positions are determined by purely situational factors as a result in the assessment of substitutability the specific operating context of the industry needs to be taken into account this implies also that environmental policy needs to be designed to be adaptive and responsive to those situational factors to create beneficial outcomes for the economy and for the environment

the impact of pollution abatement investment on productivity change anempirical comparison of the u s germany and canada since environmental quality became an important focus of government regulations in most industrialized countries in the early 1970s many researchers have assessed the impact of these regulations on economic performance for example leontief and ford 11 and pasurka 15 investigated the impact that environmental protection costs had on prices in the u s walter 24 calculated the effect of pollution abatement expenditures on u s trade and robinson 19 measured the distributional impact of the burden of industrial pollution abatement a related issue involves the productivity consequences of environmental regulations in this paper we address this issue by considering the impact of pollution abatement investment on productivity growth

separability test for the electricity supply industry this paper examines the vertical integration issue of the electricity industry this industry is typically vertically integrated and heavily regulated the paper investigates the potential technological efficiency loss due to the vertical disintegration using the translog production function three separability hypotheses using the allen uzawa elasticity of substitution are tested to examine the feasibility of various degrees of disintegration of the current industry structure all three separability hypotheses are rejected and the cost of disintegration is estimated further estimates indicate that the electricity industry appears to have exhausted economies of scale unlike other deregulated industries disintegration of the electricity industry will entail technological efficiency loss

is the implementation of energy saving and emission reduction policy really effective in chinese cities a policy evaluation perspective abstract reducing pollutant emissions while ensuring a stable economic growth is an important embodiment of sustainable development based on the national comprehensive demonstration of energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy eser policy proposed by the chinese government in 2011 this paper analyzes the impact of such policy on emissions reduction and economic growth under the framework of differences in differences did method this paper first identifies the implementation conditions of eser policy then we adopt three specifications to control the endogenous problem for the selection of demonstration cities the robustness test verifies the reliability of our findings and the spillover effect analysis reveals the deficiency of this policy we reach the following conclusions 1 different from the previous studies we find that the eser policy can effectively reduce the pollutant emissions while ensuring a stable economic growth 2 however the event study reveals that the reduction effect is only existing in the demonstration period which means that this policy is not sustainable 3 furthermore we find no spillover effect of eser policy on the non policy targeted pollutant suggesting that the local government only cares about the reduction of policy targeted pollutants based on these findings we propose that the future energy saving and emissions reduction policy formulation should focus on the policy sustainability and overall environmental performance

do exogenous shocks better leverage the benefits of technological change in the staged elimination of differential environmental regulations evidence from china s cement industry before and after the 2008 great sichuan earthquake abstract technological modernization is crucial for productivity and environmental management and has profound implications for china where both overproduction and industrial pollution are serious issues this study reports empirical results for existing cement plants in sichuan province in china capturing changes in productivity and environmental performance between 2007 and 2010 during this time period as the moratorium period of differential environmental regulations came to an end certain existing plants modernized their production processes after the great sichuan earthquake in 2008 using primary data and the directional distant function approach this study investigates the financial and environmental benefits of technological modernization by examining improvements in productivity and environmental performance we find that the decision to modernize by changing the production process from conventional vertical shaft kilns vsks to modern dry rotary kilns as part of a cleaner production strategy yields significant savings in pollution abatement costs without compromising production efficiency we compare this modernization strategy to a reference strategy whereby firms continued to use vsk technology and invested in end of pipe technology to satisfy stricter environmental regulations we find that the environmental benefits of technological modernization are approximately three times greater than the non environmental financial benefits when environmental benefits are considered the payback period is significantly reduced going from 8 97 years to 2 26 years

the impact of regulatory reforms on cost structure ownership and competition in indian banking this paper evaluates the impact of financial sector reforms on the cost structure characteristics and on the ownership cost efficiency relationship in indian banking it also examines the impact of reforms on the dynamics of competition in the lending market we find evidence that deregulation improves banks performance and fosters competition in the lending market results suggest technological progress once indian commercial banks have adjusted to the new regulatory environment this however does not translate in efficiency gains there is also evidence of an ownership effect on the level and pattern of efficiency change finally competition keeps building pace even in the re regulation period and technological improvements are not hampered by the tightening of prudential norms

the influence of chinese environmental regulation on corporation innovation and competitiveness abstract according to porter hypothesis appropriate environmental regulation can promote corporation innovation the innovation will even offset the corporation loss caused by environmental regulation and improve corporation competitiveness in order to explore the porter hypothesis practical situation in china this paper does an empirical study to explore this mechanism by using chinese pollution intensive corporations panel data samples during 2007 2012 results show that the implementation of flexible control policies has achieved initial success environmental regulation has significant positive effects on corporation s innovation but the fact of its weak effects also partly explains why environmental regulation still has negative effects on corporation competitiveness even it is insignificant from the point of regional differences east and middle regions have weak but not strong porter hypothesis phenomenon while that of the west region is not significant return on assets roa and gross domestic product gdp in the east region are relatively higher which is not based on high energy consumption and environmental pollution but due to the high transformation rate of research and development expenditure r d to roa for the middle region even it shows signs of the strong porter hypothesis but due to the fact that government gives fiscal subsidies and tax returns to companies to cover the cost from environmental regulation it only has the weak but not strong porter hypothesis phenomenon since this mechanism is not consistent with that of porter hypothesis

evaluating the efficiency of industrial environmental regulation in china a three stage data envelopment analysis approach abstract environmental regulation is of great concern to international academics and policy makers previous studies often regarded environmental regulation as an influencing factor when calculating eco efficiency or energy efficiency more attention should be given to the efficiency of environmental regulation especially in industrial field according to exiting studies industrial environmental regulation efficiency iere may be influenced by external environmental factors to explore the influence and obtain an actual efficiency this paper calculated iere in china by using the panel data of 30 regions from 2011 to 2015 the 12th five year plan period through the three stage data envelopment analysis approach firstly the undesirable slacks based model method was used to calculate the original iere secondly the economic base industrial structure urbanization level and education level were taken as external environmental variables and the effect of external environmental factors and stochastic disturbance were excluded thirdly the actual iere can be calculated after adjusting input values the results showed that china s iere was underestimated due to the impact from external environmental factors moreover the iere was more influenced by pure technical efficiency than scale efficiency the iere of each region varied thus targeted policies should be formulated according to local conditions this research provided a new analytical method for calculating environmental regulation efficiency the method can be applied either in other countries or in other sectors

renewable energy consumption economic growth nexus for china abstract the aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in china for the period 1977 2011 autoregressive distributed lag approach ardl to cointegration and johansen cointegration techniques are employed by including intermittent variables namely carbon dioxide emissions and labor we also employed granger causality test in order to determine the direction of the causality among the variables the results show that there is a bi directional long term causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth this finding implies that growing economy in china is propitious for the development of renewable energy sector which in turn helps to boost economic growth we also find that labor influences renewable energy consumption in the short term however there is no evidence of long or short run causality between carbon emissions and renewable energy consumption this implies that actual level of renewable energy in china is still insignificant and not considerably exploited in order to contribute to the mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions

how does administrative pricing affect energy consumption and co2 emissions in china despite reforms china still largely applies the cost plus pricing mechanism for the energy sector government administrative energy pricing leads to energy price distortions which could result in not only the excessive and wasteful energy consumption but also environmental deterioration thereby undermining energy conservation and emission abatement using fossil fuel subsidies as a proxy for the level of energy price distortions this paper estimates the subsidy of 22 chinese departments during the period 2006 2010 and adopts the price gap approach to analyze the impacts of subsidy removal on energy consumption and co2 emissions for the various sectors and energy types the results demonstrate that removing energy subsidies would reduce energy consumption and emissions by 3 77 and 2 85 respectively but the effects vary across sectors the transport storage and post sector and the electricity gas and water supply sector are much more affected by energy subsidies removal than other sectors with respect to energy types fuel oil and natural gas are sensitive to subsidies indicating the magnitude of their consumption this suggests that removing subsidies on these fuel types could significantly reduce co2 emissions finally we comprehensively discuss relevant policy issues on energy price formation reform

productivity scale economies and technical change in ontario hydro the growing importance of electric utilities in the canadian economy is reflected in the fact that the share of real domestic product attributable to this sector has increased from 2 1 in 1971 to 2 6 in 1979 with ontario hydro accounting for about one third of the output an empirical analysis of the production structure of ontario hydro reveals the degree of substitution between factor inputs and the contribution to total factor productivity growth of economies of scale capacity utilization and technical change the analysis confirms that there is a legitimate rationale to over capitalize and add more capacity in order to encourage the substitution of electricity for non renewable sources the analysis also suggests a number of steps that would improve ontario hydro s performance with both the federal and provincial governments playing a role 22 references 6 tables

environmental policy the porter hypothesis and the composition of capital effects of learning and technological progress abstract in this paper the effect of environmental policy on the composition of capital is investigated by allowing for nonlinearities it generalizes xepapadeas and de zeeuw j environ econ manage 37 1999 165 and determines scenarios in which their results do not carry over in particular we show that the way acquisition cost of investment decreases with the age of the capital stock is of crucial importance we also focus more explicitly on learning and technological progress among others we obtain that in the presence of learning implementing a stricter environmental policy with the aim to reach a certain target of emissions reduction has a stronger negative effect on industry profits which implies quite the opposite as to what is described by the porter hypothesis

the impact of environmental regulations on industry productivity direct and indirect effects abstract the paper develops an approach to measuring the impact of environmental regulations on total factor productivity growth which is less restrictive than a simple growth accounting approach environmental regulations have a direct impact on productivity growth due to the diversion of resources toward required abatement capital there can be a further indirect effect however as conventional inputs and production processes are changed in response to requirements to purchase abatement capital we estimate this indirect effect using a flexible functional form cost function total factor productivity and the direct and indirect productivity effects of environmental regulations are presented for five polluting industries we find that the indirect effect can be either positive or negative and in all industries is energy using the net impact of environmental regulations on total factor productivity growth is fairly small given that these are the most polluting industries they account for about 10 30 of the productivity decline of the 1970s in these industries

does environmental policy stringency foster innovation and productivity in oecd countries abstract in this paper we test the weak and strong versions of the porter hypothesis using data from 14 oecd countries over the period 1990 2011 our analysis makes two contributions to the literature on the topic first we use a newly released environmental policy stringency index eps provided by the oecd as an indicator for the stringency of environmental regulations which addresses the multi dimensionality of environmental regulations second as a suitable method to deal with asymmetric distributions of the dependent variables we use a panel quantile regression model which allow us to test whether or not the hypothesis holds for all quantiles of the distribution of the corresponding dependent variable the findings indicate that in the short term a more strict environmental policy is associated with an increase in the number of patent applications and in total factor productivity tfp for the highest quantiles of the distribution of patents and for all quantiles of tfp respectively moreover environmental stringency has a positive effect on research and development expenditures rd only in the lower quantiles 10 25 in the long term the eps is affecting rd patents and tfp in all quantiles and hence more stringent environmental regulations promote cleaner production processes that could help improving energy efficiency

substitution in the electric power industry an interregional comparison in the eastern us abstract the electric power industry is restructuring as regulations move from states to regional and national levels estimates of regional fuel and input substitution are essential for practitioners and policy makers this paper estimates substitution under static and dynamic scenarios examining changes in technology and total factor productivity from 2001 to 2008 two stage estimation reveals regional characteristics and underlying elements in fuel and factor choice processes substitution varies widely depending on the region coal technology capital investment and r d activities

environmental regulation technological innovation and energy consumption a cross region analysis in china abstract china has encountered the environmental issues and energy pressures in the middle income stage strengthening environmental regulation is a crucial measure to prevent environment deterioration and energy dilemma this paper investigates the three types of environmental regulations on energy consumption using feasible generalized least squares method during 1997 2015 in direct and indirect path the main conclusions are as follows in the direct path the economical and supervised types of environmental regulations have inhibited energy consumption whilst legal environmental regulation has no significant impact as for indirect path the rebound effect of energy is greater than the energy conservation generated by technological innovation which is embodied as an inhibitory effect the effects of environmental regulation display regional difference the legal and supervised types of environmental regulations have significant cost effect and rebound effect on energy consumption in the entire samples on the contrary the economical environmental regulation shows the opposite sigh in eastern regions the counterfactual simulation results show that the net effects of environmental regulations on energy consumption are negative which is beneficial for relieving energy pressures based on the findings this paper provides pertinent policy implications

cost functions and nonlinear prices estimating a technology with quality differentiated inputs the paper is concerned with developing a production theory for the case when some inputs have nonlinear prices because the price depends on endogenous quality this involves extending the notion of a cost function to the case where nonlinear prices are parameters of costs after developing the appropriate theory we apply our results to the case of coal fired electric power generation where fuel quality depends on sulfur and ash impurities environmental regulations induce a negative value on sulfur whereas ash impurities degrade performance and thus reduce production possibilities a number of empirical results emerge including significant rates of technological change that are sulfur and ash saving though capital using this change may explain in part the recent drop in the price of sulfur allowances in the united states

environmental regulation capital output and energy efficiency in china an empirical research based on integrated energy prices abstract how to improve environmental quality and achieve high quality development of economy have become important challenges for china in the new era based on the klems framework this paper analyzes the relationship between environmental regulation factor substitution and energy saving effect by using panel structure vector autoregression model and panel data of china industry from 2004 to 2014 the following conclusions are drawn 1 china s environmental regulation can promote the substitution of capital to energy however benefit of this substitution in the long run is greater than that in the short run 2 only in the long run can china s environmental regulations have significant energy saving effect technological innovation is the main reason for the improvement of energy saving effect of environmental regulation 3 china s environmental regulation will not significantly improve the structure of capital which makes the economic benefits low finally the paper discusses the possible ways to improve china s environmental regulation from the aspects of forming a scientific environmental supervision system improving energy pricing mechanism and capital structure

environmental regulation and competitiveness empirical evidence on the porter hypothesis from european manufacturing sectors abstract this paper investigates the weak and strong versions of porter hypothesis ph focusing on the manufacturing sectors of 17 european countries between 1997 and 2009 the hypothesis that well crafted and well enforced regulation would benefit both the environment and the firm was originally proposed by porter 1991 and porter and van der linde 1995 to date the literature has analyzed the impact of environmental regulation on innovation and on productivity mostly in separate analyses and focusing on the usa the few existing contributions on europe study the effect of environmental regulation either on green innovation or on performance indicators such as exports we instead look at overall innovation and productivity impacts first focusing on overall innovative activity allows us to account for potential opportunity costs of induced innovations second productivity impacts are arguably the most relevant indicators for the strong ph as a proxy of environmental policy stringency we use pollution abatement and control expenditures pace one of the few sectoral level indicators available we remedy upon its main drawback namely potential endogeneity by adopting an instrumental variable estimation approach we find evidence of a positive impact of environmental regulation on the output of innovation activity as proxied by patents thus providing support in favor of the weak ph this result is in line with most of the literature on the other front we find no evidence in favor of the strong ph as productivity appears to be unaffected by the degree of pollution control and abatement efforts

the effects of regulation on research and development theory and evidence while other aspects of the effects of regulation on resource allocation have received considerable attention the impact of regulation on the innovative p ropensities of regulated firms has generated only limited and somewha t tenuous evidence accordingly this article investigates the effect s of regulation and firm structure on research and development r d expenditures a simple model of the behavior of a firm under a rate o f return regulation suggests that both the stringency of the allowed rate of return constraint and the inclusion or exclusion of r d in a firm s rate base will be key determinants of firm level r d expenditu res the empirical results strongly support the theoretical model copyright 1988 by the university of chicago

the economic costs of environmental regulation in u s dairy farming a directional distance function approach analyses of the costs of regulating greenhouse gas emissions from dairy production which could be used to assess the effectiveness of alternative policy measures is a missing link in the literature this article addresses this gap by establishing the economic impact associated with a hypothetical greenhouse gas environmental regulatory regime across major dairy producing counties in the united states in doing so the article makes three important contributions to the literature first it develops a comprehensive pollution index based on environmental protection agency methodologies which contrasts with previous studies that rely on partial measures based only on surplus nitrogen stemming from the over application of fertilizer second the article uses a directional output distance function an approach that has not been employed previously to evaluate polluting technologies in the u s dairy sector third the article incorporates a four way error approach that accounts for unobserved county heterogeneity time invariant persistent technical efficiency time varying transient technical efficiency and a random error the results indicate that regulating greenhouse gas emissions from dairy farming would induce a 5 percentage point increase in average technical efficiency in addition the economic costs of implementing this hypothetical regulatory framework exhibit significant spatial variation across counties in the united states

some microeconometric evidence concerning the effect of the canada pension plan on personal saving growing criticism of canada s retirement income system during the past few years has resulted in renewed pressure on both federal and provincial governments to expand public pension programmes especially the canada pension plan cpp once again this prospect has aroused fears that an unfunded expansion of the public pension system could have a seriously adverse effect on personal saving the adverse effect on personal saving it is argued could in turn lower investment and thereby reduce even further what is already by postwar standards an extremely sluggish rate of productivity growth for the canadian economy however the basis for fearing that public pensions may reduce household saving is somewhat questionable since the wealth replacement effect of public pensions on saving may be offset by an induced retirement effect and perhaps by inter generational transfers in the form of bequests the theory at least is inconclusive in this regard 1 surprisingly enough unlike in the united states where the theoretical indeterminacy concerning the overall impact of public pensions on saving has spawned a multitude of empirical studies the subject has been largely ignored by econometricians in canada but sparse though the empirical evidence may be it does not support the seemingly popular contention that public pensions reduce personal saving in the only published empirical study to date boyle and murray 1979 conclude from their analysis of time series data that canada s public pension plans have had no visible effect on household savings behaviour this paper presents some cross sectional evidence on the response of personal saving to public pensions which appears to conflict with the boyle and murray findings it is organized as follows section i describes the methodology and the data base used the empirical results are analysed in section ii some conclusions follow in section iii

productivity growth and environmental regulation in mexican and u s food manufacturing many argued during the nafta debate that trade liberalization would favor mexican over u s food processors especially because of lax environmental laws south of the border we find through an examination of profit functions that productivity growth in mexico has outstripped that in the united states suggesting free trade indeed will benefit mexican suppliers u s pollution regulations have had no impact on the profitability or productivity of u s food manufacturing in contrast mexico s swiftly rising environmental standards have enhanced food processors productivity growth corroborating the porter hypothesis pollution law therefore has favored mexican over u s food processing but for reasons few had anticipated

does affirmative action work caste gender college quality and academic success in india public policy in modern india features affirmative action programs intended to reduce inequality that stems from a centuries old caste structure and history of disparate treatment by gender we study the effects of one such affirmative action program an admissions policy that fixes percentage quotas common across more than 200 engineering colleges for disadvantaged castes and for women we show that the program increases college attendance of targeted students particularly at relatively higher quality institutions an important concern is that affirmative action might harm intended beneficiaries by placing them in academic programs for which they are ill prepared we find no evidence of such adverse impacts

environmental innovations and profitability how does it pay to be green an empirical analysis on the german innovation survey much of the empirical literature analysing the relation between environmental innovation and competitiveness has focused on the question whether it pays to be green we differentiate between different types of environmental innovations which will be disentangled in those aiming at reducing the negative externalities and those allowing for efficiency increases and cost savings what we analyze is at first the extent to which these two typologies have impacts on firms profitability with opposite signs and secondly whether the motivations driving the adoption of those innovations make the difference in terms of economic gains we find empirical evidence that both the typology of environmental innovation and the driver of their adoption affect the sign of the relationship between competitiveness and environmental performance the empirical strategy is based on a sample of german firms and makes use of a merge of two waves of the mannheim innovation panel in 2011 and 2009 that allow overcoming some endogeneity issues which may arise in a cross section setting

product innovation in response to environmental standards and competitive advantage a hedonic analysis of refrigerators in the japanese retail market abstract the purpose of this study is to determine whether environmentally friendly attributes that are innovated in response to environmental standards contribute to creating a competitive advantage because manufacturers of products with only commoditized value cannot achieve a competitive advantage they need to add differentiated value including environmentally friendly attributes through product innovation in this situation environmental standards have a potential to encourage them to undertake product innovation thus this study analyzes not only whether a product with environmentally friendly attributes that reflect environmental standards receives a price premium but also whether product commoditization that is associated with drastic price declines has occurred for the product the methodology for these analyses is a hedonic price regression using data for refrigerators sold in the japanese retail market during 1998 2012 the main findings are as follows first the fundamental value of refrigerating has been drastically commoditized in the last 15 years second products that are chlorofluorocarbon free and energy consumption efficient reflecting environmental standards have a price premium third the price premium for each attribute has specific trends during the period these findings support the view that a product s environmentally friendly attributes that reflect environmental standards more or less compensate for the commoditized value through the price premium therefore product innovation in response to environmental standards helps create a competitive advantage especially where product commoditization has occurred

environmental regulation cost and industry structure changes nonstationary markov analyses are used to investigate impacts of environmental regulatory costs associated with compliance on changes in market structure in pulp and paper industries results show environmental regulation expenditures have statistically significant effects on the probabilities of capacity moving to a larger company size category so industry structure is affected by environmental regulation however counter to expectations results further show consolidation occurs with higher probability when environmental costs are falling rather than when they are rising policy analyses that presume immediate policy responses to cost changes or that industry structure is unchanged may yield time inconsistent policy conclusions

case study evidence that direct regulation remains the main driver of industrial pollution avoidance and may benefit operational efficiency abstract environmental regulation is required to reduce industrial pollution to levels that are socially acceptable and economically efficient but there is debate over the most efficient form of such regulation typically a limited range of environmental and economic parameters are accounted for in the econometric studies that inform that debate this paper integrates evidence from two separate studies to assess a broad range of parameters related to the efficiency of industrial environmental regulation questionnaire responses from 25 italian manufacturers of building chemicals and 28 irish pharmaceutical manufacturers provided evidence on the environmental effectiveness and operational impacts of different regulatory instruments combined with extensive emissions data from irish pharmaceutical manufacturers survey results enabled a quantitative estimation of pollution avoidance specifically attributable to direct regulation the monetised social benefit of avoided pollution was found to be equal to direct compliance costs chemical manufacturers in italy and ireland stated that direct regulation is a more important driver of industrial environmental performance than economic or voluntary regulation and their responses indicated that direct compliance costs may be countered somewhat by stimulated operational improvements it was concluded that direct regulation is an effective approach for multi pollutant control in an industrial context and that the efficiency of such regulation may be underestimated in studies that do not consider the full range of pollutants and operational effects

a general index of technical change this paper outlines a procedure for estimating a general index of technical change within the context of a quite general production technology specifically when panel data are available for firms in an industry time specific dummies can be combined in a nonlinear estimation procedure to yield a general index of technical change that may be both nonneutral and scale augmenting this approach offers numerous advantages over the traditional time trend representation of technical change for example the general index can serve as the basis for analysis of the determinants of technical change results for a sample of 30 electric utilities over the period 1951 78 show that the productivity decline of the 1970s can be attributed primarily to sulphur oxide restrictions and secularly declining capacity utilization due to rapidly increasing peak load demands

the sensitivity of productivity growth measures to alternative structural and behavioral assumptions an application to electric utilities 1951 1984 this article examines the sensitivity of three alternative multifactor productivity growth estimates for the electric utility industry during the 1951 1984 period the results indicate that multifactor productivity growth estimates are quite sensitive to the relaxation of various structural and behavioral assumptions first a benchmark measure is constructed along the lines suggested by solow 1957 this residual approach produces estimates that suggest a substantial decline in firm level productivity growth after the mid 1960s prior to obtaining the second and third estimates empirical tests of the structural and behavioral assumptions underlying a firm s operation are conducted first the structural assumption of constant returns to scale is rejected and the resulting long run scale adjusted multifactor productivity growth estimates are found to be consistently less than the residual estimates second the behavioral assumption of long run equilibrium is rejected comparing the long run scale ad

subequilibrium in the north american steel industries a study of short run biases from regulation and utilisation fluctuations the purpose of this paper has been to develop a short run framework for assessment of various biases including technical output or scale utilization and regulatory biases to address questions about the impacts of exogenous shocks on firm behavior this framework was then used to assess issues about the effects of regulation utilization output demand fluctuations and technical change on the structure of the steel industry the theoretical development as well as the application to the u s and canadian steel industries indicate the wide ranging applications of such a framework copyright 1988 by royal economic society

admission tuition and financial aid policies in the market for higher education we present an equilibrium model of the market for higher education our model simultaneously predicts student selection into institutions of higher education financial aid educational expenditures and educational outcomes we show that the model gives rise to a strict hierarchy of colleges that differ by the educational quality provided to the students we also develop a new estimation procedure that exploits the observed variation in prices within colleges identification is based on variation in endowments and technology it does not rely on observed variation in potentially endogenous characteristics of colleges such as peer quality measures and expenditures we estimate the structural parameters using data collected by the national center for education statistics and aggregate data from peterson s and the national science foundation

environmental regulation and environmental productivity the case of china abstract constrained by the dual mission of supporting industrial growth and reducing emissions china s traditional emission reduction oriented environmental policies unavoidably face a dilemma this study adopts the gml index to calculate china s industrial productivity by considering environmental factors in addition based on the assumption of industry heterogeneity the author examines the non linear relationship between china s environmental regulation and environmental productivity and calculated the optimal regulation environment for industries according to this study when impact of undesirable outputs pollutant emissions is considered environmental regulation and environmental productivity are positively correlated which to some degree validates the porter hypothesis at present environmental regulation has significant positive effects on clean production industries but shows a lag effect on pollution intensive industries the degree of environmental regulation and environmental productivity show an inverted u shaped relation and display three thresholds it should be noted however that the relationship between regulation and productivity may vary across industries these findings have clear policy implications rather than continually increasing the level of environmental regulation the government should establish standards for individual industries that emphasize flexibility