The employment impact of cleaner production on the firm level: empirical evidence from a survey in five European countries

Klaus Rennings and Thomas Zwick

No 01-08, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: This paper analyses the determinants of employment reactions of firms when environmental innovations have been carried out. It differentiates hereby between employment increases and decreases. The data stem from a telephone survey covering more than 1500 firms in five European countries that have introduced environmental innovations recently. Environmentally beneficial product and service innovations create jobs in contrast to process innovations. Employment changes occur in the wake of major innovations only and especially in small firms and firms with positive sales expectations. While innovations purely motivated by environmental goals tend not to have employment effects, cost reductions envisaged by environmental innovations reduce employment. We detect skill biased technological change of environmental innovations. Environmental innovations have a small but positive effect on employment on the firm level. Thus, environmental support programmes do not counteract labour market policy. A further shift from end-of-pipe technologies to cleaner production, especially towards product and service innovations, would be beneficial for the environment and creates jobs.

Keywords: Environmental technologies; cleaner production; innovation; labour demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 O33 Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/24427/1/dp0108.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: EMPLOYMENT IMPACT OF CLEANER PRODUCTION ON THE FIRM LEVEL: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM A SURVEY IN FIVE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES (2002)
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:zbw:zewdip:5363

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().