IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lvl/lagrcr/0104.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Productivité et réglementation environnementale: une analyse de l'hypothèse de Porter

Author

Listed:
  • Ambec, Stefan
  • Barla, Philippe

Abstract

The Porter hypothesis predicts that environmental regulations (ER) should have a positive impact on the productivity of the regulated firms. In this paper, we review the theoretical and empirical arguments surrounding this hypothesis. We show that there are relatively few formal theoretical justifications to this hypothesis. However, some recent theoretical advances (particularly in firm theory) provide intriguing possibilities. Generally, empirical evidence suggest that ER have a negative impact on regulated firms. However, these studies have numerous limitations and particularly a lack of theoretical framework. Moreover, the measures of productivity used are generally inadequate since they do not explicitly include undesirable outputs. We discuss the recent development of green productivity measures. From this review of the literature, we conclude that while there are evidence against the Porter Hypothesis, it is probably too soon to completely reject it.

Suggested Citation

  • Ambec, Stefan & Barla, Philippe, 2001. "Productivité et réglementation environnementale: une analyse de l'hypothèse de Porter," Cahiers de recherche 0104, GREEN.
    • Handle: RePEc:lvl:lagrcr:0104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.green.ecn.ulaval.ca/CahiersGREEN2001/01-04.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ouellette, Pierre & Lasserre, Pierre, 1985. "Mesure de la productivité : la méthode de Divisia," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 61(4), pages 507-526, décembre.
    2. d'Aspremont, Claude & Jacquemin, Alexis, 1988. "Cooperative and Noncooperative R&D in Duopoly with Spillovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(5), pages 1133-1137, December.
    3. Boyd, Gale A. & McClelland, John D., 1999. "The Impact of Environmental Constraints on Productivity Improvement in Integrated Paper Plants," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 121-142, September.
    4. Paul Lanoie & Georges A. Tanguay, 1998. "Dix exemples de rentabilité financière liés à une saine gestion environnementale," CIRANO Working Papers 98s-05, CIRANO.
    5. J.B. Smith & W A. Sims, 1985. "The Impact of Pollution Charges on Productivity Growth in Canadian Brewing," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(3), pages 410-423, Autumn.
    6. Eli Berman & Linda T. M. Bui, 2001. "Environmental Regulation And Productivity: Evidence From Oil Refineries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(3), pages 498-510, August.
    7. Dale W. Jorgenson & Peter J. Wilcoxen, 1990. "Environmental Regulation and U.S. Economic Growth," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(2), pages 314-340, Summer.
    8. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    9. Adam B. Jaffe et al., 1995. "Environmental Regulation and the Competitiveness of U.S. Manufacturing: What Does the Evidence Tell Us?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 132-163, March.
    10. Cadot Olivier & Sinclair-Desgagne Bernard, 1995. "Environmental Standards and Industrial Policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 228-237, September.
    11. Charles Dufour & Paul Lanoie & Michel Patry, 1995. "Regulation and Productivity in the Quebec Manufacturing Sector," CIRANO Working Papers 95s-12, CIRANO.
    12. Fare, Rolf & Grosskopf, Shawna & Tyteca, Daniel, 1996. "An activity analysis model of the environmental performance of firms--application to fossil-fuel-fired electric utilities," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 161-175, August.
    13. Aghion, Ph. & Dewatripont, M. & Rey, P., 1997. "Corporate governance, competition policy and industrial policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 797-805, April.
    14. Adam B. Jaffe & Karen Palmer, 1997. "Environmental Regulation And Innovation: A Panel Data Study," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(4), pages 610-619, November.
    15. Fare, Rolf, et al, 1993. "Derivation of Shadow Prices for Undesirable Outputs: A Distance Function Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(2), pages 374-380, May.
    16. Christainsen, Gregory B. & Haveman, Robert H., 1981. "The contribution of environmental regulations to the slowdown in productivity growth," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 381-390, December.
    17. Simpson, R. David & Bradford, Robert III, 1996. "Taxing Variable Cost: Environmental Regulation as Industrial Policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 282-300, May.
    18. Karen Palmer & Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney & Karen Palmer & Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney, 2004. "Tightening Environmental Standards: The Benefit-Cost or the No-Cost Paradigm?," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 3, pages 53-66, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Ambec, Stefan & Barla, Philippe, 2002. "A theoretical foundation of the Porter hypothesis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 355-360, May.
    20. Kennedy, Peter, 1994. "Innovation stochastique et coût de la réglementation environnementale," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 70(2), pages 199-209, juin.
    21. Gray, Wayne B, 1987. "The Cost of Regulation: OSHA, EPA and the Productivity Slowdown," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 998-1006, December.
    22. Gollop, Frank M & Roberts, Mark J, 1983. "Environmental Regulations and Productivity Growth: The Case of Fossil-Fueled Electric Power Generation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 654-674, August.
    23. Rey, Patrick & Salanie, Bernard, 1996. "On the Value of Commitment with Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(6), pages 1395-1414, November.
    24. Fare, Rolf, et al, 1989. "Multilateral Productivity Comparisons When Some Outputs Are Undesirable: A Nonparametric Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(1), pages 90-98, February.
    25. Barbera, Anthony J. & McConnell, Virginia D., 1990. "The impact of environmental regulations on industry productivity: Direct and indirect effects," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 50-65, January.
    26. Pittman, Russell W, 1983. "Multilateral Productivity Comparisons with Undesirable Outputs," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 93(372), pages 883-891, December.
    27. Daniel Tyteca, 1997. "Linear Programming Models for the Measurement of Environmental Performance of Firms—Concepts and Empirical Results," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 183-197, May.
    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. Loisel, Rodica, 2009. "Environmental climate instruments in Romania: A comparative approach using dynamic CGE modelling," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2190-2204, June.
    2. Fuentes Castro, D., 2012. "Funding for green growth," Working papers 392, Banque de France.
    3. Vanessa OLTRA & Maïder SAINT JEAN, 2009. "Environmental Innovations and Industrial Dynamics (In French)," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2009-22, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).

    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. Stefan Ambec & Mark A. Cohen & Stewart Elgie & Paul Lanoie, 2013. "The Porter Hypothesis at 20: Can Environmental Regulation Enhance Innovation and Competitiveness?," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 7(1), pages 2-22, January.
    2. Stefan Ambec & Paul Lanoie, 2007. "When and Why Does It Pay To Be Green?," CIRANO Working Papers 2007s-20, CIRANO.
    3. Ambec, Stefan & Barla, Philippe, 2005. "Can Environmental Regulations be Good for Business? an Assessment of the Porter Hypothesis," Cahiers de recherche 0505, Université Laval - Département d'économique.
    4. Dietrich Earnhart & Dylan G. Rassier, 2016. "“Effective regulatory stringency” and firms’ profitability: the effects of effluent limits and government monitoring," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 111-145, October.
    5. Bruce Domazlicky & William Weber, 2004. "Does Environmental Protection Lead to Slower Productivity Growth in the Chemical Industry?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 28(3), pages 301-324, July.
    6. Anabel Zárate-Marco & Jaime Vallés-Giménez, 2015. "Environmental tax and productivity in a decentralized context: new findings on the Porter hypothesis," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 313-339, October.
    7. Ambec, Stefan & Barla, Philippe, 2007. "Survol des fondements théoriques de l’hypothèse de Porter," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 83(3), pages 399-413, septembre.
    8. Rassier, Dylan G. & Earnhart, Dietrich, 2015. "Effects of environmental regulation on actual and expected profitability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 129-140.
    9. Earnhart, Dietrich & Germeshausen, Robert & von Graevenitz, Kathrine, 2022. "Effects of information-based regulation on financial outcomes: Evidence from the European Union's public emission registry," ZEW Discussion Papers 22-015, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    10. Ambec, Stefan & Barla, Philippe, 2005. "Quand la réglementation environmentale profite aux polleurs. Survol des fondements théoriques de l'hypothèse de Porter," Cahiers de recherche 0504, GREEN.
    11. Brännlund, Runar & Lundgren, Tommy, 2008. "Environmental policy and profitability - Evidence from Swedish industry," Umeå Economic Studies 750, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    12. Johan Brolund & Robert Lundmark, 2017. "Effect of Environmental Regulation Stringency on the Pulp and Paper Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-16, December.
    13. Conchita Ayerbe & Carmen Górriz, 2001. "The Effects of Environmental Regulations on the Productivity of Large Companies: An Empirical Analysis of the Spanish Case," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 5(2), pages 129-152, June.
    14. Xiguang Cao & Min Deng & Fei Song & Shihu Zhong & Junhao Zhu, 2019. "Direct and moderating effects of environmental regulation intensity on enterprise technological innovation: The case of China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-20, October.
    15. Hamamoto, Mitsutsugu, 2006. "Environmental regulation and the productivity of Japanese manufacturing industries," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 299-312, November.
    16. Telle, Kjetil & Larsson, Jan, 2007. "Do environmental regulations hamper productivity growth? How accounting for improvements of plants' environmental performance can change the conclusion," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2-3), pages 438-445, March.
    17. Erik Hille & Patrick Möbius, 2019. "Environmental Policy, Innovation, and Productivity Growth: Controlling the Effects of Regulation and Endogeneity," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 73(4), pages 1315-1355, August.
    18. Brännlund, Runar, 2008. "Productivity and environmental regulations - A long run analysis of the Swedish industry," Umeå Economic Studies 728, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    19. Dylan Rassier & Dietrich Earnhart, 2010. "Does the Porter Hypothesis Explain Expected Future Financial Performance? The Effect of Clean Water Regulation on Chemical Manufacturing Firms," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 45(3), pages 353-377, March.
    20. Eric Giraud-Héraud & Jean-Pierre Ponssard & Bernard Sinclair Desgagné & Louis-Georges Soler, 2016. "The agro-food industry, public health, and environmental protection: investigating the Porter hypothesis in food regulation," Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, Springer, vol. 97(2), pages 127-140, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Productivité; Réglementation environnementale; Hypothèse de Porter;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • Q28 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Government Policy
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    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:lvl:lagrcr:0104. 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: Manuel Paradis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/grlvlca.html .

    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.