The impacts of environmental regulations on competitiveness

Antoine Dechezleprêtre and Misato Sato

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This article reviews the empirical literature on the impacts of environmental regulations on firms’ competitiveness, as measured by trade, industry location, employment, productivity and innovation. The evidence shows that environmental regulations can lead to statistically significant adverse effects on trade, employment, plant location and productivity in the short run, in particular in a well-identified subset of pollution- and energy-intensive sectors, but that these impacts are small relative to general trends in production. At the same time, there is evidence that environmental regulations induce innovation in clean technologies, but the resulting benefits do not appear to be large enough to outweigh the costs of regulations for the regulated entities. As measures to address competitiveness impacts are increasingly incorporated into the design of environmental regulations, future research will be needed to assess the validity and effectiveness of such measures, and to ensure they are compatible with the environmental objectives of the policies.

JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (196)

Published in Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, July, 2017, 11(2), pp. 183 - 206. ISSN: 1750-6824

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/77700/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impacts of Environmental Regulations on Competitiveness (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:77700

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