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on Resource Economics |
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Issue of 2011‒02‒19
three papers chosen by |
| By: | M. Fadaee; L. Lambertini |
| Abstract: | Acquired wisdom has it that the allocation of pollution rights to firms hinders their willingness to undertake uncertain R&D projects for environmental-friendly technologies. We revisit this issue in a model where firms strategically choose whether to participate in an auction to attain pollution permits, or instead invest in green R&D, to show that, somewhat counterintuitively, a side effect of the auction is in fact that of fostering environmental R&D in an admissible range of the model parameters. |
| JEL: | L13 Q55 |
| Date: | 2011–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp729&r=res |
| By: | Michael Greenstone; John A. List; Chad Syverson |
| Abstract: | Whether and to what extent environmental regulations influence the competitiveness of firms remains a hotly debated issue. Using detailed production data from tens of thousands of U.S. manufacturing plants drawn from Annual Survey of Manufactures, we estimate the effects of environmental regulations—captured by the Clean Air Act Amendments’ division of counties into pollutant-specific nonattainment and attainment categories—on manufacturing plants’ total factor productivity (TFP) levels. We find that among surviving polluting plants, a nonattainment designation is associated with a roughly 2.6 percent decline in TFP. The regulations governing ozone have particularly discernable effects on productivity, though effects are also seen among particulates and sulfur dioxide emitters. Carbon monoxide nonattainment, on the other hand, appears to increase measured TFP, though this appears to be concentrated among refineries. When we apply corrections for two likely sources of positive bias in these estimates (price mismeasurement and sample selection on survival), we estimate that the total TFP loss for polluting plants in nonattaining counties is 4.8 percent. This corresponds to an annual lost output in the manufacturing sector of roughly $14.7 billion in 1987 dollars ($24.4 billion in 2009 dollars). These costs have important implications for both the intensity and location of firm expansions. |
| Date: | 2011–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:11-03&r=res |
| By: | Natalia Melgar (Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República); Máximo Rossi (Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this study is to extend previous findings by showing that involvement in environmental issues is shaped by personal attributes such as education and the subjective income but also by country characteristics. The dataset for this research comes from the 2005 World Value Survey and the 2008 Latin-barometer survey that allow us to consider a large and heterogeneous set of countries. The contributions of the paper are three-fold. Firstly, we provide clear evidence that the economic performance plays a relevant role, one direct consequence of this finding is that policies that change the macroeconomic arena would also change people’s attitudes. Secondly, we find that environmental quality could be considered as a luxury good by richer people because people’s attitudes depend not only on their income but also on the economic performance. Finally, richer people are aware of the availability of resources and of the quality of the institutions, hence their behavior changes depending on the characteristics of the country: in relatively poorer countries (where there are fewer resources), they tend to participate more than richer people that live in relatively richer countries. |
| Keywords: | environmental economics, environmental quality, income, human development, cross-country research |
| JEL: | K32 O12 O13 Q50 Q56 |
| Date: | 2010–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ude:wpaper:2110&r=res |