IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unm/umamer/2003011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Environmental Porter Hypothesis as a Technology Adoption Problem?

Author

Listed:
  • Kriechel, Ben
  • Ziesemer, Thomas

    (MERIT)

Abstract

The Porter Hypothesis postulates that the costs of compliance with environmental standards may be partially or even fully offset by adoption of innovations they trigger. The timing of the adoption aspect of the Porter Hypothesis has not been captured in formal theory so far. We show in this paper how the Porter Hypothesis can be approached using a model of technology adoption. In the Reinganum-Fudenberg-Tirole game of timing, a firm adopts earlier under stricter environmental taxation, and under some circumstances can credibly precommit to early adoption. We show that all times of adoption - preemption, following and joint late adoption - are earlier the higher the non-adoption tax. Under preemption the firm of the country that varies environmental taxes will adopt first with certainty indicating increased competitiveness, but get lower profits than without environ- mental policy. Thus the Porter Hypothesis of increasing overall profits is rejected.

Suggested Citation

  • Kriechel, Ben & Ziesemer, Thomas, 2003. "The Environmental Porter Hypothesis as a Technology Adoption Problem?," Research Memorandum 011, Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
  • Handle: RePEc:unm:umamer:2003011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.merit.unu.edu/publications/rmpdf/2003/rm2003-011.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Armin Schmutzler, 2001. "Environmental Regulations and Managerial Myopia," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 18(1), pages 87-100, January.
    2. Jennifer F. Reinganum, 1981. "On the Diffusion of New Technology: A Game Theoretic Approach," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 48(3), pages 395-405.
    3. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, December.
    4. 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.
    5. Fudenberg, Drew & Tirole, Jean, 1987. "Understanding Rent Dissipation: On the Use of Game Theory in Industrial Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(2), pages 176-183, May.
    6. Stefan Ambec & Paul Lanoie, 2007. "When and Why Does It Pay To Be Green?," CIRANO Working Papers 2007s-20, CIRANO.
    7. Robert Ayres, 1994. "On economic disequilibrium and free lunch," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 4(5), pages 435-454, October.
    8. 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.
    9. Ambec, Stefan & Barla, Philippe, 2002. "A theoretical foundation of the Porter hypothesis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 355-360, May.
    10. Klein, Martin & Rothfels, Jacqueline, 1999. "Can Environmental Regulation of X-Ineffecient Firms Create a -Double Dividend-?," IWH Discussion Papers 103/1999, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    11. Mohr, Robert D., 2002. "Technical Change, External Economies, and the Porter Hypothesis," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 158-168, January.
    12. Ulrich Steger & Wouter Achterberg (†) & Kornelis Blok & Henning Bode & Walter Frenz & Corinna Gather & Gerd Hanekamp & Dieter Imboden & Matthias Jahnke & Michael Kost & Rudi Kurz & Hans G. Nutzinger &, 2005. "Sustainable Development and Innovation in the Energy Sector," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-540-26882-6 edited by Friederike Wütscher, June.
    13. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1985. "Preemption and Rent Equalization in the Adoption of New Technology," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 52(3), pages 383-401.
    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. Ulph, Alistair, 1996. "Environmental Policy and International Trade when Governments and Producers Act Strategically," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 265-281, May.
    16. Marklund, Per-Olov, 2003. "Environmental Regulation and Firm Efficiency: Studying the Porter Hypothesis using a Directional Output Distance Function," Umeå Economic Studies 619, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    17. Greaker, Mads, 2003. "Strategic environmental policy; eco-dumping or a green strategy?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 692-707, May.
    18. 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.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ben Kriechel & Thomas Ziesemer, 2009. "The environmental Porter hypothesis: theory, evidence, and a model of timing of adoption," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3), pages 267-294.
    2. Ziesemer, Thomas & Kriechel, Ben, 2006. "Taxation and Technology Adoption: A Hotelling Approach," MERIT Working Papers 2006-009, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    3. Paul Lanoie & Jérémy Laurent‐Lucchetti & Nick Johnstone & Stefan Ambec, 2011. "Environmental Policy, Innovation and Performance: New Insights on the Porter Hypothesis," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 803-842, September.
    4. Stefan Ambec & Paul Lanoie, 2007. "When and Why Does It Pay To Be Green?," CIRANO Working Papers 2007s-20, CIRANO.
    5. 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.
    6. repec:dgr:umamer:2003011 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. repec:dgr:umamer:2005008 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. repec:dgr:unumer:2007024 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. 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.
    10. André, Francisco J., 2015. "Strategic Effects and the Porter Hypothesis," MPRA Paper 62237, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. 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.
    12. repec:ner:maastr:urn:nbn:nl:ui:27-19334 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. 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.
    14. Stefan Ambec & Paul Lanoie, 2009. "Performance environnementale et économique de l'entreprise," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(4), pages 71-94.
    15. 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.
    16. George van Leeuwen & Pierre Mohnen, 2017. "Revisiting the Porter hypothesis: an empirical analysis of Green innovation for the Netherlands," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1-2), pages 63-77, February.
    17. 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.
    18. Indrani Roy Chowdhury & Sandwip K. Das, 2011. "Environmental regulation, green R&D and the Porter hypothesis," Indian Growth and Development Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 4(2), pages 142-152, September.
    19. Rassier, Dylan G. & Earnhart, Dietrich, 2015. "Effects of environmental regulation on actual and expected profitability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 129-140.
    20. Dechezleprêtre, Antoine & Kozluk, Tomasz & Kruse, Tobias & Nachtigall, Daniel & de Serres, Alain, 2019. "Do Environmental and Economic Performance Go Together? A Review of Micro-level Empirical Evidence from the Past Decade or So," International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, now publishers, vol. 13(1-2), pages 1-118, April.
    21. Shunsuke Managi & SJames J. Opaluch & Di Jin & Thomas A. Grigalunas, 2005. "Environmental Regulations and Technological Change in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 81(2).
    22. Böhringer, Christoph & Moslener, Ulf & Oberndorfer, Ulrich & Ziegler, Andreas, 2012. "Clean and productive? Empirical evidence from the German manufacturing industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 442-451.
    23. Sen, Suphi, 2015. "Corporate governance, environmental regulations, and technological change," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 36-61.
    24. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economics of technology ;

    JEL classification:

    • Q2 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation
    • F1 - International Economics - - Trade
    • H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:unm:umamer:2003011. 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: Leonne Portz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/meritnl.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.