CO 2 emission intensity and exporting: Evidence from firm-level data

In this paper, we analyse the effects of a unilateral change in an emissions tax in a model of international trade with heterogeneous firms. We find a positive effect of tighter environmental policy on average productivity in the reforming country through reallocation of labour towards exporting firms. Domestic aggregate emissions fall, due to both a scale and a technique effect, but we show that the reduction in emissions following the tax increase is smaller than in autarky. Moreover, general equilibrium effects through changes in the foreign wage rate lead to a reduction in foreign emissions and, hence, to negative emissions leakage in case of transboundary pollution.

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“…This matches well recent empirical findings at the firm-level (cf Forslid et al, 2018;Richter and Schiersch, 2017;Holladay, 2016)…”

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confidence: 91%

Environmental Policy and Firm Selection in the Open Economy

Kreickemeier

Richter

2019

SSRN Journal

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“…This is because economic development and, consequently, financial development and human capital are unbalanced and vary a lot across areas in China. Also, it is worthwhile to exploit the environmental impact of financial development by further separating it into formal and informal finance, as in Ayyagari, Demirgüç-Kunt, and Maksimovic (2010), or by doing this at firm-level, as in Forslid, Okubo Karen, and Ulltveit-Moe (2014) and Richter and Schiersch (2017). These avenues are left for future research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They show that economic growth and increasing the share of the tertiary industry can significantly reduce carbon emission intensity, whereas promoting urbanization has an adverse effect. Cole, Elliott, Okubo, and Zhou (2013), Forslid, Okubo Karen, and Ulltveit-Moe (2014), and Richter and Schiersch (2017) analyze the impact of export activities on CO 2 emission intensity at firm-level. They all find that exporting activities can reduce firms' CO 2 emission intensity.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

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The Dynamic Impacts of Financial Development and Human Capital on Co2 Emission Intensity in China: An Ardl Approach

Ouyang

2019

Journal of Business Economics and Management

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This paper studies the dynamic impacts of financial development, human capital, and economic growth on CO2 emission intensity in China for the period 1978–2015, with a structural breakpoint in 1992, by employing an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The estimations show that there exists a long-run cointegration linkage among the variables, with three main findings. First, financial openness measured by net FDI inflows can significantly reduce CO2 emission intensity in both the short-term and the long-term, whereas the effects of both financial scale and financial efficiency are limited and insignificant. Second, there exists an inverted N-shaped relationship between human capital and CO2 emission intensity: improving human capital first decreases CO2 emission intensity (before 1992), then increases it in the short-run (after 1992), and, finally, lessens it in the long-run. Last, raising per capita income can also significantly lower CO2 emission intensity in the long-run. Accordingly, some policy implications are also discussed.

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“…The final dataset used in the production function estimations is an unbalanced panel with 174,863 observations. Table 1 shows the main 17 We follow Richter and Schiersch (2017) and drop observations from the mining industries, from manufacturing of tobacco products (C12), and from manufacturing of refined petroleum products (C19). The number of observations is insufficient in these industries, which leads to conflicts with the privacy policy rules applied in the Statistical Offices.…”

Section: Descriptive Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agglomeration Economies and the Firm TFP: Different Effects Across Industries

Gornig

Schiersch

2019

SSRN Journal

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This paper analyzes the effect of agglomeration economies on firms' total factor productivity. We propose the use of a control function approach to overcome the econometric issue inherent to the two-stage approach commonly used in the literature. Estimations are conducted separately for four industry groups, defined by technological intensity, to allow for non-uniform effects of agglomeration economies on firms given their technological level. In addition, R&D is included to account for the firms' own efforts to foster productivity through creating and absorbing knowledge. Finally, radii as well as administrative boundaries are used for defining regions. The results confirm differences in the strength and even in the direction of agglomeration economies: While urban economies have the largest effect on TFP for firms in high-tech industries, they have no effect on TFP in low-tech industries. For firms in the latter industries, however, the variety of the local economic structure has an impact, while this is irrelevant for the TFP of firms in high-tech industries. Only localization economies have a positive and significant effect on TFP throughout, but the effect increases with technological intensity of industries. Throughout, R&D is also found to have a positive effect that increases with technological intensity.

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CO 2 emission intensity and exporting: Evidence from firm-level data

Cited by 86 publications

References 60 publications

Environmental Policy and Firm Selection in the Open Economy

Environmental Policy and Firm Selection in the Open Economy

The Dynamic Impacts of Financial Development and Human Capital on Co2 Emission Intensity in China: An Ardl Approach

Agglomeration Economies and the Firm TFP: Different Effects Across Industries

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