Well-designed environmental regulation and firm performance: Swedish evidence on the Porter hypothesis and the effect of regulatory time strategies

Jan Weiss, Andreas Stephan and Tatiana Anisimova

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2019, vol. 62, issue 2, 342-363

Abstract: Using recent data on a cross-section of Swedish chemical and pulp and paper firms, this paper provides novel empirical insights into the Porter hypothesis. Well-designed environmental regulation can stimulate firms’ innovative capabilities, while at the same time generating innovation offsets that may both offset net compliance costs and yield a competitive edge over those firms that are not affected by such regulations. In doing so, we also test the alleged effectiveness of regulatory time strategies in stimulating innovation activities of regulated firms. We find evidence for the effectiveness of such well-designed regulations: announced rather than existing regulation induces innovation and some innovation offsets. Our results imply that empirical tests of the Porter hypothesis that do not account for its dynamic nature, and that do not measure well-designed regulations, might provide misleading conclusions as to its validity.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09640568.2017.1419940 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:jenpmg:v:62:y:2019:i:2:p:342-363

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CJEP20

DOI: 10.1080/09640568.2017.1419940

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management is currently edited by Dr Neil Powe, Dr Ken Willis and George Bill Page

More articles in Journal of Environmental Planning and Management from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().