As climate change has gained more attention in the last decade, effects of environmental regulation on productivity are important to design green tax reforms. This study examines the impacts of environmental taxes and spillovers on technical efficiency, using data on Central European manufacturing firms, from 2009 to 2017. The results highlight strong effects of environmental taxation on productivity. Besides, downstream energy taxation does not affect productivity, while upstream taxes decrease technical efficiency. Downstream pollution taxation decreases productivity, whereas upstream taxation spurs technical efficiency. This study contributes to the literature by investigating heterogeneous tax effects across industries, involving tax spillovers and considering endogeneity issues.

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An important proposition in Economics claims that competition spurs technical efficiency, as it forces firms to raise competitiveness to survive market pressure. This study examines the effects of firm-level Lerner indexes on productivity, using a dataset on energy firms from Central European postcommunist countries during 2009-2017. The energy sector is of particular interest, as markets are still concentrated, although governments have liberalized them considerably. To contribute to the literature, I derive Lerner indexes from the production function next to involving the return on sales. Supporting the literature, the overall results highlight that market power significantly decreases productivity.

Although Central European post‐communist countries have considerably liberalized energy sectors, privatizations have been poorly implemented establishing legal monopolies and retaining governments' pervasive influence. This study examines the effects of state ownership on productivity and Lerner indices, using a dataset on Central European firms, operating in industries of general interest, from 2009 to 2017. This study contributes to the literature by estimating production functions of energy companies, establishing a link between government ownership, and productivity and Lerner indices, applying continuous measures of state ownership, and evaluating impacts across quantiles. The overall results highlight that state ownership is associated with significant productivity losses, which increase over quantiles, and lower market power.