International Cooperation for Transboundary Pollution Abatement: An Empirical Investigation of Model Assumptions
Joint with Keila Meginnis, Tobias Börger, Nick Hanley, Robert Johnston, Tom Ndebele & Ghamz E. Ali Siyal
| Revising for Land Economics
International environmental agreements (IEAs) for transboundary pollutants impose a standard set of simplifying assumptions: (1) citizens in each country care only about environmental damages in their own country and (2) the likelihood of a country joining or remaining within an IEA can be represented using the preference ordering of a representative agent. This paper examines empirically the validity of these assumptions, drawing from a case study of marine plastic pollution, using data from a cross-country discrete choice experiment in the UK and US. Results suggest that foundational assumptions of IEA models may be violated for pollutants such as marine plastics.
Innovation and Environmental Stringency: The Case of Sulfur Dioxide Abatement
Joint with Cees Withagen | link to paper on SSRN (dorment)
A weak version of the Porter hypothesis claims that strict environmental policy provides positive innovation incentives, hence triggering improved competitiveness and securing environmental quality. In a comparative way, this paper empirically tests this hypothesis across countries by linking environmental stringency to innovation proxied by patents in the field of SO2 abatement over the period 1970-2000. Three different models of environmental stringency are examined. Two of these models do not reveal a positive significant effect on innovation as a result of increased stringency. In the theoretically preferred model, however, a positive relationship between environmental stringency and innovation is obtained.