IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/srt/wpaper/0918.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The impact of pollution abatement investments on production technology: a nonparametric approach

Author

Listed:
  • Jean Pierre Huiban

    (INRA-ALISS, France)

  • Camilla Mastromarco

    (University of Salento, Lecce, Italy)

  • Antonio Musolesi

    (University of Ferrara, Italy)

  • Michel Simioni

    (INRA, UMR 1110 MOISA, Montpellier, France)

Abstract

This paper estimates the impact of pollution abatement investments on the production technology of firms by pursuing two new directions. First, we take advantage of recent econometric developments in productivity, effciency analysis and nonparametric kernel regression by adopting a conditional nonparametric frontier analysis. Second, we focus not only on the average effect but also search for potential nonlinearities. We provide new results suggesting that pollution abatement capital affects with a bell-shaped fashion technological catch-up (ineffciency distribution) and does not affect technological change (shifts in the frontier). These results have relevant implications both for modeling and for the purposes of advice on environmentally friendly policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean Pierre Huiban & Camilla Mastromarco & Antonio Musolesi & Michel Simioni, 2018. "The impact of pollution abatement investments on production technology: a nonparametric approach," SEEDS Working Papers 0918, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised Sep 2018.
    • Handle: RePEc:srt:wpaper:0918
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sustainability-seeds.org/papers/RePec/srt/wpaper/0918.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2018
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.sustainability-seeds.org/papers/RePec/srt/wpaper/0918.pdf
    File Function: Revised version, 2018
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stefan Ambec & Mark A. Cohen & Stewart Elgie & Paul Lanoie, 2013. "The Porter Hypothesis at 20: Can Environmental Regulation Enhance Innovation and Competitiveness?," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 7(1), pages 2-22, January.
    2. Peter Hall & Qi Li & Jeffrey S. Racine, 2007. "Nonparametric Estimation of Regression Functions in the Presence of Irrelevant Regressors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(4), pages 784-789, November.
    3. Nicholas M. Kiefer & Jeffrey S. Racine, 2017. "The smooth colonel and the reverend find common ground," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1-3), pages 241-256, March.
    4. Camilla Mastromarco & Léopold Simar, 2015. "Effect of FDI and Time on Catching Up: New Insights from a Conditional Nonparametric Frontier Analysis," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(5), pages 826-847, August.
    5. Daron Acemoglu & Ufuk Akcigit & Douglas Hanley & William Kerr, 2016. "Transition to Clean Technology," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(1), pages 52-104.
    6. Shadbegian, Ronald J. & Gray, Wayne B., 2005. "Pollution abatement expenditures and plant-level productivity: A production function approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2-3), pages 196-208, August.
    7. Alois Kneip & Léopold Simar & Paul W. Wilson, 2016. "Testing Hypotheses in Nonparametric Models of Production," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 435-456, July.
    8. Dale W. Jorgenson & Peter J. Wilcoxen, 1990. "Environmental Regulation and U.S. Economic Growth," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(2), pages 314-340, Summer.
    9. André, Francisco J., 2015. "Strategic Effects and the Porter Hypothesis," MPRA Paper 62237, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Philippe Aghion & Antoine Dechezleprêtre & David Hémous & Ralf Martin & John Van Reenen, 2016. "Carbon Taxes, Path Dependency, and Directed Technical Change: Evidence from the Auto Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(1), pages 1-51.
    11. Cinzia Daraio & Léopold Simar, 2005. "Introducing Environmental Variables in Nonparametric Frontier Models: a Probabilistic Approach," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 93-121, September.
    12. Wayne B. Gray & Ronald J. Shadbegian, 1998. "Environmental Regulation, Investment Timing, and Technology Choice," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 235-256, June.
    13. Paul Lanoie & Jérémy Laurent‐Lucchetti & Nick Johnstone & Stefan Ambec, 2011. "Environmental Policy, Innovation and Performance: New Insights on the Porter Hypothesis," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 803-842, September.
    14. Hall, Peter G. & Racine, Jeffrey S., 2015. "Infinite order cross-validated local polynomial regression," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 185(2), pages 510-525.
    15. Badin, Luiza & Daraio, Cinzia & Simar, Léopold, 2010. "Optimal bandwidth selection for conditional efficiency measures: A data-driven approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 201(2), pages 633-640, March.
    16. Adam B. Jaffe & Karen Palmer, 1997. "Environmental Regulation And Innovation: A Panel Data Study," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(4), pages 610-619, November.
    17. Tim Coelli & Sergio Perelman & Elliot Romano, 1999. "Accounting for Environmental Influences in Stochastic Frontier Models: With Application to International Airlines," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 251-273, June.
    18. Deborah Aiken & Rolf Färe & Shawna Grosskopf & Carl Pasurka, 2009. "Pollution Abatement and Productivity Growth: Evidence from Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 44(1), pages 11-28, September.
    19. Léopold Simar & Paul Wilson, 2011. "Two-stage DEA: caveat emptor," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 205-218, October.
    20. Karen Palmer & Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney & Karen Palmer & Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney, 2004. "Tightening Environmental Standards: The Benefit-Cost or the No-Cost Paradigm?," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 3, pages 53-66, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    21. Peter Hall & Jeff Racine & Qi Li, 2004. "Cross-Validation and the Estimation of Conditional Probability Densities," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 99, pages 1015-1026, December.
    22. Ambec, Stefan & Barla, Philippe, 2002. "A theoretical foundation of the Porter hypothesis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 355-360, May.
    23. Mohr, Robert D., 2002. "Technical Change, External Economies, and the Porter Hypothesis," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 158-168, January.
    24. Andr, Francisco J. & Gonzlez, Paula & Porteiro, Nicols, 2009. "Strategic quality competition and the Porter Hypothesis," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 182-194, March.
    25. Bădin, Luiza & Daraio, Cinzia & Simar, Léopold, 2012. "How to measure the impact of environmental factors in a nonparametric production model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 223(3), pages 818-833.
    26. Cazals, Catherine & Florens, Jean-Pierre & Simar, Leopold, 2002. "Nonparametric frontier estimation: a robust approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 1-25, January.
    27. Battese, G E & Coelli, T J, 1995. "A Model for Technical Inefficiency Effects in a Stochastic Frontier Production Function for Panel Data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 325-332.
    28. Halkos, George E. & Tzeremes, Nickolaos G., 2013. "Economic growth and environmental efficiency: Evidence from US regions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 48-52.
    29. Thomas Broberg & Per-Olov Marklund & Eva Samakovlis & Henrik Hammar, 2013. "Testing the Porter hypothesis: the effects of environmental investments on efficiency in Swedish industry," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 43-56, August.
    30. Gray, Wayne B. & Shadbegian, Ronald J., 2003. "Plant vintage, technology, and environmental regulation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 384-402, November.
    31. George E. Halkos & Shunsuke Managi, 2017. "Measuring the Effect of Economic Growth on Countries’ Environmental Efficiency: A Conditional Directional Distance Function Approach," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 68(3), pages 753-775, November.
    32. Adam B. Jaffe et al., 1995. "Environmental Regulation and the Competitiveness of U.S. Manufacturing: What Does the Evidence Tell Us?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 132-163, March.
    33. George Halkos & Nickolaos Tzeremes, 2014. "Measuring the effect of Kyoto protocol agreement on countries’ environmental efficiency in CO 2 emissions: an application of conditional full frontiers," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 367-382, June.
    34. H. Fried & C. Lovell & S. Schmidt & S. Yaisawarng, 2002. "Accounting for Environmental Effects and Statistical Noise in Data Envelopment Analysis," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 157-174, January.
    35. repec:bla:jindec:v:46:y:1998:i:2:p:235-56 is not listed on IDEAS
    36. Simar, Leopold & Wilson, Paul W., 2007. "Estimation and inference in two-stage, semi-parametric models of production processes," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 31-64, January.
    37. Halkos, George E. & Tzeremes, Nickolaos G., 2013. "A conditional directional distance function approach for measuring regional environmental efficiency: Evidence from UK regions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 227(1), pages 182-189.
    38. Qi Li & Jeffrey Scott Racine, 2006. "Nonparametric Econometrics: Theory and Practice," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 8355.
    39. George Halkos & Nickolaos Tzeremes, 2012. "Measuring German regions’ environmental efficiency: a directional distance function approach," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 7-16, March.
    40. Daouia, Abdelaati & Simar, Leopold, 2007. "Nonparametric efficiency analysis: A multivariate conditional quantile approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 375-400, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jean Pierre Huiban & Camilla Mastromarco & Antonio Musolesi & Michel Simioni, 2018. "Reconciling the Porter hypothesis with the traditional paradigm about environmental regulation: a nonparametric approach," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 85-100, December.
    2. Jean Pierre Huiban & Camilla Mastromarco & Antonio Musolesi & Michel Simioni, 2016. "The impact of pollution abatement investments on production technology: new insights from frontier analysis," SEEDS Working Papers 0716, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised Jul 2016.
    3. Antonio Musolesi & Jean Pierre Huiban & Camilla Mastromarco & Michel Simioni, 2015. "The impact of pollution abatement investments on technology: Porter hypothesis revisited," Working Papers 2015084, University of Ferrara, Department of Economics.
    4. Yunguo Lu & Lin Zhang, 2023. "Environmental information disclosure and firm production: evidence from the estimated efficiency of publicly listed firms in China," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 99-119, February.
    5. Bădin, Luiza & Daraio, Cinzia & Simar, Léopold, 2019. "A bootstrap approach for bandwidth selection in estimating conditional efficiency measures," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 277(2), pages 784-797.
    6. Cordero Ferrera, Jose Manuel & Alonso Morán, Edurne & Nuño Solís, Roberto & Orueta, Juan F. & Souto Arce, Regina, 2013. "Efficiency assessment of primary care providers: A conditional nonparametric approach," MPRA Paper 51926, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. López-Torres, Laura & Johnes, Jill & Elliott, Caroline & Polo, Cristina, 2021. "The effects of competition and collaboration on efficiency in the UK independent school sector," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 40-53.
    8. Cordero, José Manuel & Pedraja-Chaparro, Francisco & Pisaflores, Elsa C. & Polo, Cristina, 2016. "Efficiency assessment of Portuguese municipalities using a conditional nonparametric approach," MPRA Paper 70674, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Daraio, Cinzia & Simar, Léopold, 2014. "Directional distances and their robust versions: Computational and testing issues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 237(1), pages 358-369.
    10. Tzeremes, Nickolaos G., 2015. "Efficiency dynamics in Indian banking: A conditional directional distance approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(3), pages 807-818.
    11. George E. Halkos & Shunsuke Managi, 2017. "Measuring the Effect of Economic Growth on Countries’ Environmental Efficiency: A Conditional Directional Distance Function Approach," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 68(3), pages 753-775, November.
    12. Jose M. Cordero & Francisco Pedraja-Chaparro & Elsa C. Pisaflores & Cristina Polo, 2017. "Efficiency assessment of Portuguese municipalities using a conditional nonparametric approach," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 1-24, August.
    13. Nolwenn Roudaut & Anne Vanhems, 2012. "Explaining firms efficiency in the Ivorian manufacturing sector: a robust nonparametric approach," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 155-169, April.
    14. Cinzia Daraio & Léopold Simar & Paul W. Wilson, 2020. "Fast and efficient computation of directional distance estimators," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 288(2), pages 805-835, May.
    15. Minviel, Jean Joseph & De Witte, Kristof, 2017. "The influence of public subsidies on farm technical efficiency: A robust conditional nonparametric approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 259(3), pages 1112-1120.
    16. Halkos, George E. & Tzeremes, Nickolaos G., 2014. "Public sector transparency and countries’ environmental performance: A nonparametric analysis," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 19-37.
    17. Guangshun Qiao & Zhan-ao Wang, 2021. "Vertical integration vs. specialization: a nonparametric conditional efficiency estimate for the global semiconductor industry," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 139-150, December.
    18. Dechezleprêtre, Antoine & Kozluk, Tomasz & Kruse, Tobias & Nachtigall, Daniel & de Serres, Alain, 2019. "Do Environmental and Economic Performance Go Together? A Review of Micro-level Empirical Evidence from the Past Decade or So," International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, now publishers, vol. 13(1-2), pages 1-118, April.
    19. Böhringer, Christoph & Moslener, Ulf & Oberndorfer, Ulrich & Ziegler, Andreas, 2012. "Clean and productive? Empirical evidence from the German manufacturing industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 442-451.
    20. Nickolaos G. Tzeremes, 2018. "Financial Development and Countries’ Production Efficiency: A Nonparametric Analysis," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-13, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:srt:wpaper:0918. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alessandro Palma (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.sustainability-seeds.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.