The impacts of alternative policy instruments on environmental performance. A firm level study of temporary and persistent effects

Brita Bye () and Marit E. Klemetsen ()
Additional contact information
Marit E. Klemetsen: Statistics Norway, https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/ansatte

Discussion Papers from Statistics Norway, Research Department

Abstract: We study the effects of various environmental regulations on environmental performance measured as emission intensity. Moreover, we aim to test whether any such effects are persistent or only temporary. Conventional theory predicts that indirect regulations as opposed to direct regulations provide continuous dynamic incentives for emission reductions. Our unique Norwegian firm level panel data set allow us to identify effects from different types of regulations such as environmental taxes, non-tradable emission quotas and technology standards. The data includes information of different environmental regulations, all kinds of polluting emissions, and a large number of control variables for all polluting incorporated firms. Empirically we identify positive and significant effects from both direct and indirect policy instruments. We also investigate whether the regulations provide continuous dynamic incentives that lead to persistent effects. In contrast to what the literature suggests, we find evidence that direct regulations promote persistent effects. Indirect regulations will, on the other hand, only have potential persistent effects if environmental taxes are increasing over time.

Keywords: environmental performance; emission intensity; environmental regulations; command-and-control; environmental taxes; long-run effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C01 C23 D04 D22 H23 L51 Q51 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-res and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/discussion-papers/_attachment/202105 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

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:ssb:dispap:788

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Statistics Norway, Research Department P.O.Box 8131 Dep, N-0033 Oslo, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by L Maasø ().