Decentralized Regulation, Environmental Efficiency and Productivity

Vivek Ghosal (), Andreas Stephan and Jan Weiss ()
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Jan Weiss: Jönköping International Business School, Postal: Jönköping International Business School, PO Box 1026, SE-551 11 Jönköping, Sweden

No 229, Ratio Working Papers from The Ratio Institute

Abstract: Using a unique plant-level dataset we examine green productivity growth in Sweden’s heavily regulated pulp and paper industry, which has historically been a significant contributor to air and water pollution. Our exercise is interesting as Sweden has a unique regulatory structure where plants have to comply with national environmental regulatory standards and enforcement, along with decentralised plant-specific regulations. In our analysis, we use the sequential Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index which accounts for air and water pollutants as undesirable outputs. Some of our key findings are: (1) regulation has stimulated technical change related to pollution control, and has induced plants to catch up with the best-practice technology frontier with regard to effluent abatement; (2) large plants are more heavily regulated than small plants; (3) plants in environmentally less sensitive areas or those with local importance as employer face relatively lenient regulatory constraints; (4) environmental regulations trigger localized knowledge spillovers between nearby plants, boosting their green TFP growth.

Keywords: TFP; DEA; Sequential Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index; pulp and paper industry; pollution; environmental regulations; enforcement; plant-specific regulation; productivity; Porter hypothesis. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 L51 L60 Q52 Q53 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2014-04-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eff, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-reg and nep-res
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Working Paper: Decentralized Regulation, Environmental Efficiency and Productivity (2014)
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