Empirical Evidence on the Effects of Environmental Policy Stringency on Productivity Growth

Silvia Albrizioi ; Tomasz Koźluki ; Vera Zippereri iOECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

关键词: multifactor productivity;    environmental policies;    environmental policy stringency;    environmental regulations;    Porter hypothesis;   

DOI  :  https://doi.org/10.1787/5jxrjnb36b40-en

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: OECD iLibrary

【 摘 要 】

This paper investigates the impact of changes in the stringency of environmental policies on productivity growth in OECD countries. Using a new environmental policy stringency (EPS) index, it estimates a reduced-form model of multi-factor productivity growth, where the effect of countries' environmental policies varies with pollution intensity of the industry and technological advancement. A multi-layer analysis provides insights at the aggregate economy, the industry and the firm level. At the aggregate economy level, a negative effect on productivity growth is found one year ahead of the policy change. This negative “announcement effect” is offset within three years after the implementation. At the industry level, a tightening of environmental policy is associated with a short-term increase in industry-level productivity growth, for the most technologically advanced country-industry pairs. This effect diminishes with the distance to the global productivity frontier, becoming insignificant at larger distances. At the firm level, only the technologically most advanced firms show a positive effect on productivity growth from a tightening of environmental policies, while a third of firms, the less productive ones, experience a productivity slowdown.