No abstract

The positive impact of sustainability on reputation has been assumed but not sufficiently examined. This study probes the veracity of these claims by applying legitimacy and signaling perspectives to examine whether sustainability performance and assurance contribute to corporate reputation. We find superior sustainability performance has a positive association with sustainability reputation. Companies with better performance are also more likely to obtain external assurance of their sustainability disclosure, but assurance does not directly affect reputation. Assurance appears to be a managerial tool associated with the congruence of internal processes rather than a differentiating signal to external stakeholders.

We examine whether voluntary pollution abatement programs in which there is no program-specific participation incentive are effective in reducing emissions below what they would have been otherwise. We use data on facility participation in the 33/50 Program and emissions reported to the US EPA's toxic releases inventory (TRI) between 1991 and 1995 for a sample of facilities whose parent firms committed to the program. By focusing on participation by individual facilities we avoid the influence of firm level incentives under the program. The mandatory disclosure of emissions data to the TRI avoids the potential bias evident in voluntarily disclosed data. We find that while facilities with larger total emissions were more likely to participate, there is no evidence of greater participation by facilities that account for a higher share of a parent firm's 33/50 emissions. Although emissions of the 33/50 chemicals fell over the years, we find that participation in the program was not associated with the decline in the 33/50 releases generated by these facilities and the reductions seemed to have occurred for reasons unrelated to the program.

No abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between environmental stringency and intra-EU trade flows. Two main hypotheses are tested. First, we test whether the stringency of a country's environmental regulations may result in pollution havens. Second, we test whether the results differ by industry and for old and new EU member countries. An augmented gravity model is estimated using panel data for 21 European countries during the period 1996-2008 for the full sample and also separately for the CEECS and the old EU members. Our results show weak support for the pollution haven hypothesis for some dirty industries mainly for net exports from Western EU countries to the rest. Instead, support for the "Porter hypothesis" is found for trade in clean goods. JEL classification codes: F14