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

environmental regulations innovation and firm performance a revisit of the porter hypothesis part of the research for this paper was supported by funding from nottingham innovative manufacturing research centre and the university of bedfordshire business and management research institute

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

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

india s missing girls biology customs and economic development we review the evidence on the sex ratio among children below the age of six international evidence shows that the sex ratio at birth is slightly biased towards boys but boys suffer greater mortality a pattern consistent with darwinian evolution with economic development the male bias in the child sex ratio increases south and east india show levels and trends in the child sex ratio that are consistent with this evidence however unbalanced sex ratios in the northern and western states since the first censuses indicate discrimination against girls technological developments permitting sex selective abortions have seriously aggravated the imbalances in these states economic modelling of parental choice regarding a child s gender suggests that gender imbalances may be consistent with individual maximization and marriage market equilibrium nevertheless these choices have adverse welfare consequences which will be aggravated by the decline in population growth and consequent relaxation of the marriage squeeze

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

capacity utilization in a generalized malmquist index including environmental factors a decomposition analysis productivity measures ignoring environmental effects may give misleading information on total productivity growth further business cycles in the form of capacity utilization may significantly influence productivity measures we develop an overall malmquist productivity index and decompose changing efficiency rates into a contribution from environmental factors capital and capacity utilization our new combined capacity utilization element contributes to the literature in that it also takes into account the restriction for producing negative externalities empirical applications illustrate that the choice of inputs influences the overall productivity measure and its decomposition into efficiency changes and technical changes and the capacity utilization element

effects of pollution control on industry productivity a factor demand approach four major manufacturing industries are examined the abatement effect on capital and labor productivity are determined from parameters of a system of factor demand equations which allow for disequilibrium in factor markets the system is estimated for each industry with annual time series data from 1960 to 1980 abatement requirements were found to retard both average capital productivity and average labor productivity in three of the four industries paper chemicals and primary metals for several industries in which factor productivity was slower after 1973 environmental controls accounted for a significant proportion of that slow down

an empirical analysis of the co2 shadow price in chinese thermal power enterprises abstract this paper estimates the shadow price of co2 and explores its determinants for thermal power enterprises in china using a parametric quadratic directional distance function we evaluate the inefficiency and shadow price of co2 for 124 power enterprises in 2004 applying deterministic and econometric methods a regression analysis is undertaken to examine the factors that drive shadow prices our results indicate that there are large inefficiencies in terms of electricity production and co2 emissions the shadow price is a negative function of firm size age and coal share and is positively correlated with the technology level this correlation between shadow prices and its determinants is not sensitive to changing assumptions regarding directional vectors although such changes do alter the distribution of shadow prices the large variation witnessed in shadow prices across power enterprises argues in favor of market based regulation such as an emissions trading system as opposed to the command and control regulation currently used in china to minimize overall abatement cost

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

extending the economic theory of regulation to the form of policy the mutually beneficial connection between industries and the governments that regulate them is the subject of a large literature led by stigler 1971 what has not been studied is how firms choose their desired policies from the set including entry barriers price floors subsidies and demand stimulation we take as given that government and incumbents from the supply and demand for regulation and explore the choice of political product

the rising price of husbands a hedonic analysis of dowry increases in rural india dowries in south asia have steadily risen over the last 40 years and now often amount to over 50 percent of a household s assets this paper attempts to investigate the reasons behind this increase it adapts rosen s implicit market model to the indian marriage market and tests predictions from the model with data from six villages in south central india and from the indian census it is found that a marriage squeeze caused by population growth resulting in larger younger cohorts and hence a surplus of women in the marriage market has played a significant role in the rise in dowries

clean and productive empirical evidence from the german manufacturing industry abstract in view of the controversial policy debate on green growth and corresponding stimulus packages we empirically investigate the production effects of environmental investment as well as of environmental and energy expenditures using a panel dataset of german manufacturing sectors our econometric analysis identifies a positive impact of environmental investment on production growth in contrast our estimation results cannot support the hypothesis of positive production impacts induced by environmental or energy expenditures we thus conclude that environmental regulation should in particular stimulate environmental investment in order to be compatible with the pursuit of production growth

effects of legislation events on us gaming stock returns and market turnings abstract the deregulation of casino gaming has becomea new trend across the us since the beginning of this decade but from the mid 1990s on the voice of tightened regulation is lifted up by the public while the cyber casino online gambling business is also developing its own customer base this study examines various federal and state legislation events regarding casino gaming regulation and deregulation and finds that the announcement effects on stock portfolio returns vary across different types of gaming companies on average gaming equipment suppliers and small casino operators are found to react to legislation events more significantly compared with those large casino firms furthermore since the casino gaming business is believed to be highly sensitive to the economic upturns and downturns this paper also investigates the impacts on the risk adjusted return alpha and the systematic risk beta of gaming stocks across bull up and bear down market situations the results indicate that between july 1993 and december 1997 gaming stocks on average yield a significantly lower return and a significantly greater systematic risk against the us stock market after changes in stock market conditions are controlled the systematic risk is still considerably above the market average but the excess return turns out insignificant

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

marginal abatement costs of carbon dioxide emissions and its influencing factors a global perspective abstract reducing co 2 emissions has become a major and urgent environmental goal worldwide in this paper we sample the data of 41 regions including 165 countries from 2000 to 2014 and adopt a gravity model to obtain an overview of the global flows of co 2 emissions energy consumption the global economy and capital stock since the beginning of the 21st century we then investigate global technical efficiency reduction potential shadow prices and factors influencing the marginal abatement costs of co 2 emissions based on a quadratic directional output distance function the empirical results show the following 1 the global centres of gravity for co 2 emissions energy consumption and capital stock have accelerated their shift to the asian inland in the 21st century but the global centre of gravity for the economy did not show the same trend 2 global technical inefficiency demonstrates a u shape with a turning point in 2007 average annual total global co 2 emissions could be reduced by 4482 28 mt and the global marginal abatement costs of co 2 emissions are approximately 673 74 697 73 usd t 3 the relationship between economic development and marginal abatement costs is represented by a u shaped curve the world is currently in the climbing phase of this curve implying that controlling co 2 emissions is becoming more costly moreover energy structure industrial structure and co 2 emissions are negatively correlated with marginal abatement costs finally the financial crisis has had a significant effect on marginal abatement costs

daughters dowries deliveries the effect of marital payments on fertility choices in india abstract this paper investigates the effect of the differential pecuniary costs of sons and daughters on fertility decisions the focus is on dowries in india which increase the economic returns to sons and decrease the returns to daughters the paper exploits an exogenous shift in the cost of girls relative to boys arising from a revision in anti dowry law which is shown to have decreased dowry transfers markedly the reform is found to have attenuated the widely documented positive association between daughters and their parents fertility the effect is particularly pronounced for more autonomous women and for individuals living in areas characterised by strong preferences for sons

an examination of the impact of the garn st germain depository institutions act of 1982 on commercial banks and savings and loans this paper evaluates the effects of events leading to the passage of the garn st germain depository institutions act of 1982 the evidence suggests that the call for reform by president reagan s housing commission and the senate passage of the bill produced positive abnormal returns to stockholders of large savings and loans and commercial banks stockholders of small s ls and banks on the other hand generally experienced negative abnormal returns furthermore when hopes of passage of the act faded significant negative positive abnormal returns were experienced by stockholders of large small s ls and banks this study examines the impact of the passage of the garn st germain depository institutions gsgdi act of 1982 on commercial bank and savings and loan stockholder returns the gsgdi act represents one of two major revisions of the financial system over the last twenty years the other being the depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act of 19801 the proposal for such a change reflected the growing inadequacy of the regulatory structure of financial institutions to adapt to rapid changes in technology shifting consumer demands for financial services and extremely volatile interest rates efforts to reform the financial system resulted in passage of the gsgdi act of 1982 which included provisions seeking to improve both the implementation of monetary policy and the degree of equity in the regulation of financial institutions such improvements were intended to reduce the operational and financial risk of financial institutions a central issue in the economics of regulation is whether regulatory actions benefit the economic agents they are intended to benefit a large body of literature exists which examines the economic effects of regulation much of this literature has utilized the concepts and methods of welfare economics to assess the extent

india s development in the era of growth the recent growth pattern of india is set in the context of the parallel experience of china the experience of poverty reduction is reviewed and a number of papers illuminating india s development are introduced

efficiency of the market for racetrack betting many racetrack bettors have systems since the track is a market similar in many ways to the stock market one would expect that the basic strategies would be either fundamental or technical in nature fundamental strategies utilize past data available from racing forms special sources etc to handicap races the investor then wagers on one or more horses whose probability of winning exceeds that determined by the odds by an amount sufficient to overcome the track take technical systems require less information and only utilize current betting data they attempt to find inefficiencies in the market and bet on such overlays when they have positive expected value previous studies and our data confirm that for win bets these inefficiencies which exist for underbet favorites and overbet longshots are not sufficiently great to result in positive profits this paper describes a technical system for place and show betting for which it appears to be possible to make substantial positive profits and thus to demonstrate market inefficiency in a weak form sense estimated theoretical probabilities of all possible finishes are compared with the actual amounts bet to determine profitable betting situations since the amount bet influences the odds and theory suggests that to maximize long run growth a logarithmic utility function is appropriate the resulting model is a nonlinear program side calculations generally reduce the number of possible bets in any one race to three or less hence the actual optimization is quite simple the system was tested on data from santa anita and exhibition park using exact and approximate solutions that make the system operational at the track given the limited time available for placing bets and found to produce substantial positive profits a model is developed to demonstrate that the profits are not due to chance but rather to proper identification of market inefficiencies

exploring the present through the past claudia goldin is one of the world s leading economists and economic historians and has made a series of outstanding and original contributions particularly to the cliometric or the new economic history literature in this interview professor goldin discusses with brian snowdon who first provides a background introduction several important issues relating to her research on economic history and cliometrics the economics of slavery us economic history corruption in america the role of human capital and education in us economic development wage inequality female labour force participation and the quiet revolution the influence of the contraceptive pill women s surnames the reversal of the college gender gap and women in the economics profession

differentiated regulation the case of auto emissions standards this paper presents an analysis of automotive emissions regulation that explicitly considers the link between regulation and the composition of the vehicle stock the adoption of more stringent emissions standards for new vehicles is shown to prolong the retention of old high emission rate vehicles in the fleet for this reason tighter new source standards actually increase aggregate emissions in the short run this result is of general as well as specific interest given the widespread use of differentiated regulatory tools incorporating a bias against new sources in many regulatory programs 3 references 1 table

how do environmental regulation and environmental decentralization affect green total factor energy efficiency evidence from china abstract green development is critical for china s economic transformation enhancing green total factor energy efficiency hereafter gtfee is vital to emission reduction and to win win industrial development this study uses the panel data of 30 chinese provinces for the period 2005 2016 to investigate the relationship between environmental regulation and china s gtfee the spatial durbin model is employed to control for the possible spatial spillover effect a dynamic threshold panel model that can effectively address the endogeneity problem and regional heterogeneity is utilized to examine the potential non linear relationship between environmental regulation and gtfee under different conditions of environmental decentralization the estimation results indicate that there is a significant u shaped relationship between environmental regulation and china s gtfee with the further expansion of environmental decentralization the local government s autonomous choice of pollution control is improved the improvement of environmental decentralization can lead to negative moderating effect of environmental regulation on gtfee additionally the regression results of dynamic threshold model show that environmental decentralization can increase the negative influences of environmental regulation on gtfee interestingly the non linear impact of environmental regulation on gtfee is dependent on the specific type of environmental decentralization higher degree of environmental decentralization can lead to an increase in the restraining effect of environmental regulation on gtfee however an improvement in the decentralization of environmental supervision and environmental monitoring can increase the negative influences of environmental regulation on gtfee

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

issue in pollution control interplant cost differences and economies of scale debate on interplant pollution control cost differences focuses on the question of whether a system of taxes or transferable discharge permits should require those plants with low treatment costs to control a higher share of effluents another issue under debate is whether those industries with a large minimum size may be effectively barred by pollution control requirements evidence of the inefficiency of present institutional arrangements is shown by studying production function estimations of 30 pulp and paper mills in wisconsin and michigan a more efficient reallocation of pollution control resources could be effected with more market oriented regimes 58 references 6 tables dck

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

impact of corruption in public sector on environmental quality implications for sustainability in brics and next 11 countries abstract this study investigates the impact of corruption in public sector on carbon emissions in presence of energy use segregation following the environmental kuznets curve ekc framework the study has been carried out for brazil russia india china south africa brics and next 11 countries over the period of 1990 2017 along with the finding of inverted n shaped ekc for both the cases we find that incidents of corruption enhance environmental degradation by reducing the positive impact of renewable energy consumption on environmental quality and increasing the negative impact of fossil fuel consumption this study has also divulged that the corruptive practices are more prone in case of the countries where the development is mature and institutionalization is more stringent based on these findings we suggest that environmental policies should take account of the corruption and thereby making the policies more robust and effective

beyond lobbying expenditures how lobbying breadth and political connectedness affect firm outcomes the extant lobbying literature largely focuses on the effects of firm aggregate lobbying expenditures suggesting that more lobbying expenditures fuel positive firm benefits we argue the focus on

the cost of regulation osha epa and the productivity slowdown the slowdown in productivity growth in the u s economy during the 1970 s has been a matter of great concern to policymakers associated as it is with inflation unemployment and declining real wage growth this paper examines the impact on productivity growth of government regulation specifically worker health and safety regulation by the occupational safety and health administration osha and environmental regulation by the environmental protection agency epa looking at data for 450 manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1978 the study finds a large negative relationship between such regulation and productivity growth using these results about 30 percent of the decline in productivity growth in manufacturing during the 1970 s may be attributed to such regulation several previous studies have looked at the contribution of regulation to the productivity slowdown many of these have inferred that the contribution must be small on the basis of the relatively small amount spent on complying with such regulations edward denison 1979 estimates that only about 16 percent of the productivity slowdown in the 1972 75 period was due to regulation 35 percentage points out of a slowdown of 2 17 percentage points paul portney 1981 notes that little of gnp is spent on pollution control under 2 percent concluding that therefore pollution regulations could have little effect on productivity growth norsworthy et al 1979 also find a small impact of pollution abatement capital expenditures on productivity growth studies based on econometric estimation of the regulation productivity relationship have found a wide range of results gregory christainsen and robert haveman 1981 find regulation reduced labor productivity growth by 27 percentage points using time series data and measures of total federal regulation robert crandall 1981 finds a strong relationship between pollution abatement capital and productivity growth but this relationship disappears when a measure of energy intensity is included robin siegel 1979 observes a significant contribution 5 percentage points from pollution control expenditures to the productivity slowdown for 1965 73 but not for later years finally frank gollop and mark roberts 1983 examine data for a set of electric utilities and find that regulation of emissions had a large impact on total factor productivity growth lowering it for regulated firms by 59 percentage points many other factors might help to explain the productivity slowdown including the rise in energy prices the long and severe recession and declines in research and development expenditures there have been a variety of studies examining the contributions of each factor to the slowdown they generally conclude that many factors contributed to the slowdown but that a sizable fraction of the slowdown remains unexplained by the estimated contributions of all the factors considered

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

assessing the impact of formal and informal regulations on environmental and economic performance of brazilian manufacturing firms this study investigates the impact of formal and informal regulations on environmental and economic performance of brazilian manufacturing firms we adopt a dual approach where production technology is represented by a cost function approximated by a translog form pollution is considered as a negative by product that can be modified trough using either formal regulation inspections or sanctions or informal regulation community pressure a simultaneous equation model is estimated by three stage least squares on a sample of 404 industrial establishments located in the state of sao paulo brazil we show that pollution abatement costs for the brazilian manufacturing sector are different from zero which suggests that pollution emissions are affected by environmental regulation we also demonstrate that environmental performance of firms is jointly affected by formal and informal regulation lastly formal regulation is largely influenced by informal regulation and more specifically by community pressure

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

estimates of the variance of u s inflation based upon the arch model it is generally agreed that the unpredictability of future inflation is a major component of the welfare loss associated with inflation perfectly predicted inflation might induce some costs through institutional rigidities governmental interference and transaction costs but in the long run these should be rather minimal as these institutions adopt various forms of indexing when inflation is unpredictable risk averse economic agents will incur a loss even if prices and quantities are perfectly flexible in all markets inflation is a measure of the relative price of goods today and goods tomorrow thus uncertainty in tomorrow s price impairs the efficiency of today s allocation decisions friedman in his nobel lecture 8 argues convincingly that higher variability of inflation would lead to decreased output ceteris paribus he then conjectures that higher rates of inflation are generally associated with higher variability of inflation and presumably greater uncertainty about future rates if this is true then higher rates of inflation would also be associated with low levels of output which implies a positively sloped phillips curve this paper uses a new statistical technique arch to estimate the conditional mean and variance of inflation from u s time series data the main finding is that the variance of inflation in the seventies was only slightly greater than in the sixties

pollution abatement and productivity growth evidence from germany japan the netherlands and the united states the passage of environmental legislation was accompanied by concerns about its potential detrimental effect on productivity we assume inputs can be assigned to either abatement activities or good output production this allows us to specify regulated and unregulated production frontiers to determine the association between pollution abatement and productivity growth we then employ our assigned input model to determine the association between productivity and abatement activities for manufacturing industries in germany japan the netherlands and the united states

market opportunities genetic endowments and intrafamily resource distribution child survival in rural india the authors examine how intrafamily resource allocations respond to changes in economic conditions and to genetic differences in children by estimating the determinants of variations in the sex specific survival differentials of rural indian children based on standard census and household survey data they explore in particular the hypothesis that such differences are related to the relative returns to survival with households selectively allocating resources to children in response to variation in sex differences in their expected earnings opportunities as adults data are from the 1961 census and a 1971 household survey excerpt

sources of emission reductions market and policy stringency effects abstract international trade and economic development affect air emissions previous studies have decomposed their effects into scale composition and technique effects while the scale and composition effects occur through market responses the technique effect is a policy stringency influence through the mix of environmental policies this study analyzes whether the market or policy stringency effects are more prominent previous studies have been unable to adequately separate the market and policy stringency effects to independently measure the technique effect we use two indicators of policy stringency i e shadow prices of energy and industrial energy prices these policy stringency measures are treated as endogenous the effects on six types of air emissions are estimated utilizing a sector specific international panel dataset that includes newly industrialized and former transition economies the empirical results show that the major source of emissions reductions is the policy stringency effect through carbon related policies pollution offshoring to countries with weaker carbon related regulation has a minor role in the reduction of air emissions

do environmental regulations hamper productivity growth how accounting for improvements of plants environmental performance can change the conclusion abstract many economists maintain that environmental regulations hamper productivity growth a view supported by several empirical studies on industry or state level data however there is little research of the relationship between the stringency of environmental regulation and productivity growth at the plant level and the results of the few existing studies are ambiguous moreover the measures of productivity growth applied in previous studies do not credit plants for emission reductions and this may result in understatement of productivity growth we perform regression analyses of productivity growth on regulatory stringency using plant level data to credit a plant for emission reductions we include emissions as inputs when calculating an environmental malmquist productivity index emi and do not include emissions when calculation the traditional malmquist productivity index mi the regression analyses show that the overall effect of the regulatory stringency faced by plants on plants productivity growth is statistically insignificant when mi is applied to measure productivity growth however when we apply emi the effect is positive and statistically significant this indicates that not accounting for emission reductions when measuring productivity growth can result in too pessimistic conclusions regarding the effect of regulatory stringency on productivity growth

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

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