Environmental Policy, Innovation, and Productivity Growth: Controlling the Effects of Regulation and Endogeneity

Erik Hille and Patrick Möbius ()
Additional contact information
Patrick Möbius: HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management

Environmental & Resource Economics, 2019, vol. 73, issue 4, No 15, 1315-1355

Abstract: Abstract We analyze the environmental regulation-productivity nexus and add to the literature in two main ways. First, shadow prices of energy and industrial energy prices are employed as relative measures of policy stringency. To ensure the robustness of the results, the model is also estimated for five alternative measures that have been applied in prior research. Second, we address the endogeneity of environmental regulation, innovation, and trade openness. A cross-country multi-sectoral dataset is utilized, including newly industrialized countries and former transition economies. The estimates show that the positive effects of increases in environmental policy stringency on productivity, which have often been reported in the more recent studies, change to mainly insignificant effects once simultaneity is controlled for. Hence, no support for the strong Porter Hypothesis can be found. Instead, stricter environmental regulation fosters innovation and, therefore, has an indirect, yet not decisive, positive effect on productivity growth.

Keywords: Environmental regulation; Productivity growth; Innovation; Shadow prices; Energy prices; Endogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10640-018-0300-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:enreec:v:73:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10640-018-0300-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10640/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10640-018-0300-6

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental & Resource Economics is currently edited by Ian J. Bateman

More articles in Environmental & Resource Economics from Springer, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().