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Foreign Land Acquisitions and Environmental Regulations: does the Pollution-Haven Hypothesis hold?

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  • Scoppola, M.
  • Raimondi, V.

Abstract

The recent wave of Foreign Land Acquisitions (FLA) has raised several concerns in terms of their environmental and social sustainability. An unexplored issue is whether pollution-haven mechanisms are driving the world-wide location of agricultural production. This paper investigates whether and how differences in environmental stringency between investing and target country affect the pattern of FLA. We estimate a panel gravity- equation and use different indexes of ecosystem vitality to measure the environmental stringency. Our results show that differences in environmental stringency do affect both the number of contracts and the amount of the land acquired, overall confirming the existence of pollution-haven mechanisms also in agriculture, although the direction of these effects depends on the index of environmental stringency we use and on the characteristics of the target country. Acknowledgement :

Suggested Citation

  • Scoppola, M. & Raimondi, V., 2018. "Foreign Land Acquisitions and Environmental Regulations: does the Pollution-Haven Hypothesis hold?," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277098, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:iaae18:277098
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.277098
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