Environmental Policy Stringency, Technical Progress and Pollution Haven Hypothesis

The Pollution Haven Hypothesis: Signicance and Insignicance

Theory and intuition tell us that the imposition of stringent environmental policies by a given country will reduce its net exports of commodities produced using pollution-intensive industries. It is therefore surprising that many empirical studies of international commodity trade have failed to …nd evidence of this e¤ect. This study o¤ers a new, highly focused test of the pollution haven hypot...

The Stringency of Environmental Regulation and the 'porter Hypothesis' the Stringency of Environmental Regulation and the 'porter Hypothesis'

Most empirical evidence indicates that the costs of environmental regulation represent a minor fraction of total production costs. This finding is at odds with the assumption of stringent environmental regulation of both propo-nents and opponents of the 'Porter Hypothesis'. A possible explanation may be provided by examining the nego-tiation of environmental regulation in a 'political market'. ...

Moving to Greener Pastures? Multinationals and the Pollution Haven Hypothesis

This paper presents evidence on whether multinationals are flocking to developing country "pollution havens". We begin with data from four developing countries, examining the pattern of foreign investment in Mexico, Venezuela, Morocco and Cote d'Ivoire. We find almost no evidence that foreign investors are concentrated in "dirty" sectors. We then examine the behavior of multinationals located i...

Assessing the Pollution Haven Hypothesis in an Interdependent World

After proposing a simple theoretical framework to illustrate the importance of third-country e ects in empirical studies of the Pollution Haven Hypothesis, we test the model using statelevel panel data on inbound US FDI and relative abatement costs. Our analysis reveals that while own state attributes rarely have statistically signi cant e ects on own inbound FDI when aggregated over all manufa...

The Stringency Of Environmental Regulations And Technological Change: A Specific Test Of The Porter Hypothesis