IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v150y2018icp34-51.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is the ‘Troika’ Bad for the Environment? An Analysis of EU Countries' Environmental Performance in Times of Economic Downturn and Austerity Memoranda

Author

Listed:
  • Botetzagias, Iosif
  • Tsagkari, Marouko
  • Malesios, Chrisovaladis

Abstract

In this paper we examine the effect of the current economic crisis on the environmental performance of the EU countries. By employing Hierarchical Linear Multilevel (HLM) modeling we find that, for the period 2000–2015, a drop in the national GDP (a “recession effect”) as well as endorsing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for receiving a IMF/EU/ECB financial “rescue-package” (a “Troika effect”) have non-significant to positive impacts on a number of national environmental quality and policy indicators, over and above other (economic, political and governance) predictors, for Eurozone and non-Eurozone countries alike. Nevertheless, this changes drastically if we examine these two factors' interaction: experiencing a ‘recession’ while being a recipient of a Troika-sponsored ‘rescue package’ has detrimental effects on an EU country's national environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Botetzagias, Iosif & Tsagkari, Marouko & Malesios, Chrisovaladis, 2018. "Is the ‘Troika’ Bad for the Environment? An Analysis of EU Countries' Environmental Performance in Times of Economic Downturn and Austerity Memoranda," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 34-51.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:150:y:2018:i:c:p:34-51
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.04.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800918302180
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.04.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lamla, Michael J., 2009. "Long-run determinants of pollution: A robustness analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 135-144, November.
    2. Grossman, G.M & Krueger, A.B., 1991. "Environmental Impacts of a North American Free Trade Agreement," Papers 158, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Public and International Affairs.
    3. Susanne L�tz & Matthias Kranke, 2014. "The European rescue of the Washington Consensus? EU and IMF lending to Central and Eastern European countries," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 310-338, April.
    4. Welsch, Heinz, 2004. "Corruption, growth, and the environment: a cross-country analysis," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(5), pages 663-693, October.
    5. Common,Michael & Stagl,Sigrid, 2005. "Ecological Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521016704.
    6. Frank W. Geels, 2013. "The Impact of the Financial and Economic Crisis on Sustainability Transitions: Financial Investment, Governance and Public Discourse. WWWforEurope Working Paper No. 39," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 47014, February.
    7. Daniel Fiorino, 2011. "Explaining national environmental performance: approaches, evidence, and implications," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 44(4), pages 367-389, November.
    8. Neumayer, Eric, 2003. "Are left-wing party strength and corporatism good for the environment? Evidence from panel analysis of air pollution in OECD countries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 203-220, June.
    9. Wen-Lin Wu, 2017. "Institutional Quality and Air Pollution: International Evidence," International Journal of Business and Economics, School of Management Development, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, vol. 16(1), pages 49-74, June.
    10. Yongfu Huang, 2012. "Is Economic Volatility Detrimental to Global Sustainability?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 26(1), pages 128-146.
    11. Martin Gassebner & Michael J. Lamla & Jan-Egbert Sturm, 2011. "Determinants of pollution: what do we really know?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 63(3), pages 568-595, July.
    12. Scruggs, Lyle A., 1999. "Institutions and Environmental Performance in Seventeen Western Democracies," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(1), pages 1-31, January.
    13. Esty, Daniel C. & Porter, Michael E., 2005. "National environmental performance: an empirical analysis of policy results and determinants," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(4), pages 391-434, August.
    14. Isabel Gallego-Alvarez & Mª Purificación Vicente-Galindo & Mª Purificación Galindo-Villardón & Miguel Rodríguez-Rosa, 2014. "Environmental Performance in Countries Worldwide: Determinant Factors and Multivariate Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(11), pages 1-26, November.
    15. Jeffrey Vincent & Jean Aden & Giovanna Dore & Magda Adriani & Vivianti Rambe & Thomas Walton, 2002. "Public Environmental Expenditures In Indonesia," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(1), pages 61-74.
    16. Martin Jänicke & Klaus Jacob, 2005. "Ecological Modernisation and the Creation of Lead Markets," Springer Books, in: Matthias Weber & Jens Hemmelskamp (ed.), Towards Environmental Innovation Systems, pages 175-193, Springer.
    17. Managi, Shunsuke & Hibiki, Akira & Tsurumi, Tetsuya, 2009. "Does trade openness improve environmental quality?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 346-363, November.
    18. Udo E. Simonis, 1989. "Ecological Modernization of the Economy," Departmental Working Papers _007, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Economics.
    19. Simonis, Udo E., 1989. "Ecological modernization of industrial society: three strategic elements," EconStor Research Reports 112267, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    20. Markaki, M. & Belegri-Roboli, A. & Sarafidis, Υ. & Mirasgedis, S., 2017. "The carbon footprint of Greek households (1995–2012)," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 206-215.
    21. Common,Michael & Stagl,Sigrid, 2005. "Ecological Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521816458.
    22. Knowles, J.C. & Pernia, E.M., Racelis, M., 1999. "Social Consequences of the Financial Crisis in Asia," Papers 60, Asian Development Bank.
    23. Le, Thai-Ha & Chang, Youngho & Park, Donghyun, 2016. "Trade openness and environmental quality: International evidence," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 45-55.
    24. Neumayer, Eric, 2004. "The environment, left-wing political orientation and ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3-4), pages 167-175, December.
    25. Wen, Jun & Hao, Yu & Feng, Gen-Fu & Chang, Chun-Ping, 2016. "Does government ideology influence environmental performance? Evidence based on a new dataset," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 232-246.
    26. Garmann, Sebastian, 2014. "Do government ideology and fragmentation matter for reducing CO2-emissions? Empirical evidence from OECD countries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 1-10.
    27. Susmita Dasgupta & Ashoka Mody & Subhendu Roy & David Wheeler, 2001. "Environmental Regulation and Development: A Cross-country Empirical Analysis," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 173-187.
    28. Esty, Daniel C. & Porter, Michael E., 2005. "National environmental performance: an empirical analysis of policy results and determinants," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(4), pages 381-389, August.
    29. Bernauer, Thomas & Koubi, Vally, 2009. "Effects of political institutions on air quality," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(5), pages 1355-1365, March.
    30. Sacchidananda Mukherjee & Debashis Chakraborty, 2013. "Is environmental sustainability influenced by socioeconomic and sociopolitical factors? cross‐country empirical evidence," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 353-371, November.
    31. Cole, Matthew A., 2004. "Trade, the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental Kuznets curve: examining the linkages," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 71-81, January.
    32. Charlotte Burns & Paul Tobin, 2016. "The Impact of the Economic Crisis on European Union Environmental Policy," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(6), pages 1485-1494, November.
    33. Lau, Lin-Sea & Choong, Chee-Keong & Eng, Yoke-Kee, 2014. "Investigation of the environmental Kuznets curve for carbon emissions in Malaysia: Do foreign direct investment and trade matter?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 490-497.
    34. Concetta Castiglione & Davide Infante & Maria Teresa Minervini & Janna Smirnova, 2014. "Environmental taxation in Europe: What does it depend on?," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 1-8, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhang, Wenwen & Chiu, Yi-Bin, 2020. "Do country risks influence carbon dioxide emissions? A non-linear perspective," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    2. Bernardo Cantone & Alexander S. Antonarakis & Andreas Antoniades, 2021. "The great stagnation and environmental sustainability: A multidimensional perspective," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 485-503, May.
    3. Xuehui Zhang & Zhidong Tan & Bao-Guang Chang & Kam C. Chan, 2019. "Is a Regional Coordination Approach to Air Pollution Management Helpful? Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-17, December.
    4. Igawa, Moegi & Managi, Shunsuke, 2022. "Energy poverty and income inequality: An economic analysis of 37 countries," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 306(PB).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chang, Chun-Ping & Wen, Jun & Dong, Minyi & Hao, Yu, 2018. "Does government ideology affect environmental pollutions? New evidence from instrumental variable quantile regression estimations," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 386-400.
    2. Wen, Jun & Hao, Yu & Feng, Gen-Fu & Chang, Chun-Ping, 2016. "Does government ideology influence environmental performance? Evidence based on a new dataset," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 232-246.
    3. Kauder, Björn & Potrafke, Niklas & Ursprung, Heinrich, 2018. "Behavioral determinants of proclaimed support for environment protection policies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 26-41.
    4. Haiqing Hu & Di Chen & Chun‐Ping Chang & Yin Chu, 2021. "The Political Economy Of Environmental Consequences: A Review Of The Empirical Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 250-306, February.
    5. Isabel Gallego-Alvarez & Mª Purificación Vicente-Galindo & Mª Purificación Galindo-Villardón & Miguel Rodríguez-Rosa, 2014. "Environmental Performance in Countries Worldwide: Determinant Factors and Multivariate Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(11), pages 1-26, November.
    6. Halkos, George E. & Tzeremes, Nickolaos G., 2014. "Public sector transparency and countries’ environmental performance: A nonparametric analysis," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 19-37.
    7. Lisa Gianmoena & Vicente Rios, 2018. "The Determinants of CO2 Emissions Differentials with Cross-Country Interaction Effects: A Dynamic Spatial Panel Data Bayesian Model Averaging Approach," Discussion Papers 2018/234, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    8. Lamla, Michael J., 2009. "Long-run determinants of pollution: A robustness analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 135-144, November.
    9. Miller, Sebastián J. & Vela, Mauricio A., 2013. "Are Environmental Taxes Affected by Legislatures' Ideological Positions?," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 4629, Inter-American Development Bank.
    10. Tobias Böhmelt, 2022. "Environmental-agreement design and political ideology in democracies," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 507-525, September.
    11. Katarzyna Iwińska & Athanasios Kampas & Kerry Longhurst, 2019. "Interactions between Democracy and Environmental Quality: Toward a More Nuanced Understanding," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-17, March.
    12. Todd A. Eisenstadt & Daniel J. Fiorino & Daniela Stevens, 2019. "National environmental policies as shelter from the storm: specifying the relationship between extreme weather vulnerability and national environmental performance," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 9(1), pages 96-107, March.
    13. Gallego-Álvarez, Isabel & García-Rubio, Raquel & Martínez-Ferrero, Jennifer, 2018. "Environmental performance concerns in Latin America: Determinant factors and multivariate analysis," Revista de Contabilidad - Spanish Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 206-221.
    14. Daniel Fiorino, 2011. "Explaining national environmental performance: approaches, evidence, and implications," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 44(4), pages 367-389, November.
    15. Mina Baliamoune-Lutz, 2017. "Trade and Environmental Quality in African Countries: Do Institutions Matter?," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 43(1), pages 155-172, January.
    16. Thomas Jobert & Fatih Karanfil & Anna Tykhonenko, 2012. "Trade and Environment: Further Empirical Evidence from Heterogeneous Panels Using Aggregate Data," GREDEG Working Papers 2012-15, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    17. Abid, Mehdi, 2016. "Impact of economic, financial, and institutional factors on CO2 emissions: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa economies," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 85-94.
    18. Panteli Maria & Delipalla Sofia, 2022. "The Impact of Institutions on Economic and Environmental Performance: Evidence From Europe," South East European Journal of Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 17(2), pages 125-141, December.
    19. Apostoaie Constantin-Marius, 2016. "Relevant Determinants of the Political Parties’ Environmental Preference," Scientific Annals of Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 63(s1), pages 51-69, December.
    20. Lv, Zhike & Gao, Zhenya, 2021. "The effect of corruption on environmental performance: Does spatial dependence play a role?," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 45(2).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:150:y:2018:i:c:p:34-51. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.