Over the last few decades, production processes have become increasingly fragmented: they are divided into ever smaller parts considered as separate activities, which are then spread over various locations in different countries. In other words, value chains for many products are becoming global. This implies that inputs into the production process are sourced from both local and foreign suppliers. The latter mode of sourcing is commonly referred to as offshoring. Expressed as the share of imported in total intermediates, offshoring has grown relatively fast in the recent past. Moreover, its scope has been extended as it increasingly encompasses not only manufacturing but also service activities. A typical example for the former is the sourcing from abroad of parts and components for car assembly. While offshoring of manufacturing activities has been occurring since long and has been largely facilitated by trade liberalisation, the offshoring of service activities such as the provision of accounting or call centre services is a more recent phenomenon that has been fostered by the increased tradability of such services.<p>With the increasing scale and scope of offshoring, it becomes crucial to get a grasp of its drivers as well as the gains and threats associated with it. The latter are the focal point of the public and academic discussion around offshoring, in particular the potential threats for workers in developed economies. Typical questions that are being raised are whether offshoring leads to job losses in developed countries and whether it favours certain categories of workers and is to the disadvantage of others. These threats are directly linked to the motivations for engaging into offshoring. In this respect, wage costs play a prominent role. But other factors may also influence offshoring decisions, e.g. regulations, in particular those regarding the environment. Last but not least, offshoring may also entail gains for developed economies through the improvements in the efficiency of production. In this PhD thesis, several causes and consequences of offshoring are examined empirically for Belgium.<p>The first issue that is investigated is whether offshoring of materials and business services affects industry-level employment. An improved offshoring intensity measure is introduced. It is a volume measure of the share of imported intermediates in output split into materials and business services and according to the country of origin of imports, i.e. high-wage and low-wage countries. Estimations of static and dynamic industry-level labour demand equations augmented by offshoring intensities do not reveal a significant impact of either materials or business services offshoring on total employment for Belgium. This result holds for both the manufacturing sector and the service sector and it proves robust to splitting the manufacturing sector into high-technology and low-technology industries.<p>These results raise the question whether there are actually productivity gains from offshoring. Therefore, estimates of the impact of materials and business services offshoring on industry-level productivity in Belgium are presented. Two features of the analysis are new compared to the existing literature on this subject: the issue is examined separately for manufacturing and market services industries and the possibility of forward and backward spillovers from offshoring, i.e. that productivity gains from offshoring feed through to upstream and downstream industries, is investigated. Results show that materials offshoring has no effect on productivity, while business services offshoring leads to productivity gains in manufacturing. Furthermore, there is no evidence of either forward or backward spillovers from offshoring.<p>Despite the absence of an industry-level total employment effect, offshoring may alter the within-industry composition of employment. In this respect, a major concern is the worsening of the labour market position of low-skilled workers. This issue is addressed by providing evidence on the impact of offshoring on the skill structure of manufacturing employment in Belgium between 1995 and 2007. Offshoring is found to significantly lower the employment share of low-skilled workers. Its contribution to the fall in the employment share of low-skilled workers amounts to 35%. This is mainly driven by offshoring to Central and Eastern European countries. Business services offshoring also contributes significantly to the fall in the low-skilled employment share. As a complement to the existing literature, the widely used current price measure of offshoring is compared with a constant price measure that is based on a deflation with separate price indices for domestic output and imports. This reveals that the former underestimate the extent of offshoring and its impact on low-skilled employment. Finally, further results show that the impact of offshoring on low-skilled employment is significantly smaller in industries with a higher ICT capital intensity.<p>Furthermore, attention is drawn to environmental effects of offshoring by asking whether offshoring contributes to reducing air emissions from manufacturing. Indeed, since the mid-90’s, production-related air emissions in Belgian manufacturing have been reduced substantially. It can be shown that the pace of the reduction has been fastest for domestic intermediates. The issue of whether offshoring has played a role in this reduction by replacing domestic intermediates by imported intermediates is widely debated. Here, a decomposition analysis is developed to measure the contribution of offshoring – the share of imported intermediates in total intermediates – to the fall in air emissions for domestic intermediates. Based on the results from this decomposition analysis, it is possible to calculate that 17% of the fall in greenhouse gas emissions, 6% of the fall in acidifying emissions and 7% of the fall in tropospheric precursor emissions in Belgian manufacturing between 1995 and 2007 can be attributed to offshoring.<p>Finally, emission intensities are also considered as a potential determinant of offshoring. An econometric approach for testing the pollution haven effect for imported intermediate materials is developed. The approach is new with respect to the existing literature on pollution havens through its specific focus on imports of intermediates. The test is embedded in a cost function framework from which a system of cost share equations for variable input factors is derived. The set of potential determinants of the demand for imported intermediate materials includes emission intensities for three types of air pollutants. Their impact constitutes a test of the pollution haven effect. The system of cost share equations is estimated by a within ISUR using data for the Belgian manufacturing sector. Results show some albeit relatively weak evidence of a pollution haven effect for imported intermediate materials.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Master of Science / Department of Agronomy / Jay M. Ham / The potential environmental impact of animal feeding operations on air quality has created the need for accurate air emissions measurements. Of particular concern are ammonia emissions from cattle feedlots, operations that contribute a large portion of the agricultural ammonia emissions inventory. Micrometeorological methods are ideal for emissions measurements from large, open-source areas like feedlot pens; however, theoretical assumptions about the boundary layer must be made, which may not hold true above the heterogeneous, fetch-limited surface of the feedlot. Thus, the first objective of this work was to characterize the surface boundary layer of an open-air cattle feedlot and provide insight into how micrometeorological techniques might be applied to these non-ideal sites. Eddy covariance was used to measure fluxes of momentum, heat, water, and carbon dioxide from a commercial cattle feedlot in central Kansas. Data supported the use of eddy covariance and similar methods (i.e., relaxed eddy accumulation) for flux measurements from both cattle and pen surfaces. The modeled cumulative source area contributing to eddy covariance measurements at a 6 m sample height was dominated by just a few pens near the tower, making the characteristics of those pens especially important when interpreting results. The second objective was to develop a system for measuring ammonia fluxes from feedlots. A new type of relaxed eddy accumulation system was designed, fabricated, and tested that used honeycomb denuders to independently sample ammonia in up-moving and down-moving eddies. Field testing of the relaxed eddy accumulation system at a feedlot near Manhattan, KS showed fluxes of ammonia ranged between 60 and 130 μg m-2 s-1 during the summer of 2007. Even in the high ammonia environment (e.g., 300-600 μg m-3), the honeycomb denuders had enough capacity for the 4-hour sampling duration and could be used to measure other chemical species that the denuders could be configured to capture. Results provide a foundation for emissions measurements of ammonia and other gases at cattle feedlots and help address some of the challenges that micrometeorologists face with any non-ideal source area.

機動車輛已成為空氣污染的首要污染來源之一，其所排放大量的一氧化碳、二氧化碳對地方乃至於全球環境皆造成不利的影響。為了因應環境污染與溫室效應，各國除了採取行政管制措施外，亦引進經濟誘因工具來落實污染者付費的原則。本研究的目的即是探討，台灣地區目前所實施的政策工具對於減少來自移動污染源的污染排放量的有效性。 本文利用台灣地區二十三個縣市 1998 年至 2006 年共九年的追蹤資料，以兩種模型進行實證：第一個模型採用的是一階差分後的普通最小平方法迴歸模型，可避免假性迴歸的問題發生；第二個模型為似不相關迴歸模型，藉由誤差項間的關聯性來結合北部、中部、東部、南部四個地區的迴歸式，觀察政策工具在不同區域間對污染減量的效果。 實證結果顯示，管制與稅費這兩種政策工具確實會對移動污染源產生的空氣污染有相當的抑制效果；但是相較之下，管制措施的影響力相對於稅費的徵收來得明顯。因此，已知管制工具具有環境保護的政策有效性外，若欲使得稅費政策對空氣污染減量也有更明顯的成效，便應實施綠色租稅改革，以期能夠對生活環境產生良好的改善。 / Due to its high share in total air pollutant emissions, mobile pollution source is an issue of particular consideration. Vehicles produce large volumes of emissions such as CO, CO2, and so on. These gases can be detrimental to local, regional and global environment. With the increasing concern over rising pollution levels and greenhouse effect, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of different environmental policy instruments which are used to reduce mobile source air pollution. 　　For this paper, a case study of Taiwan is demonstrated for the estimation. Using the first-differenced panel data collected from 1998 to 2006, we use two models, namely “Ordinary least square model” and “Seemingly unrelated regression model” to investigate whether the command and control policy or the economic-incentive tax strategy is better for emission abatement. The first-differenced ordinary least square model can be used to avoid spurious regression, and the seemingly unrelated regression system integrates four sub-equations by assuming their disturbances are correlated, explaining some phenomenon in different areas. 　　The result shows that both control and tax strategies are worthwhile to be adopted. However, regulation policy results in cutting down much more CO and CO2 than using the excise taxes and fuel fees as an environmental instrument. Therefore, we conclude that it is required to implement the green tax system reform in order to create beneficial changes in our life.

Depuis la révolution industrielle en Europe (XIXe siècle), les nombreuses activités anthropiques ont provoqué des changements environnementaux globaux considérables. La composition de l'atmosphère terrestre en particulier, a été fortement modifiée par l'émission de polluants gazeux et particulaires. Actuellement, l'industrie métallurgique de seconde fusion contribue de façon significative aux émissions atmosphériques de métaux. C'est pourquoi ce travail de thèse s'est focalisé sur l'étude des transferts et impacts sur les sols, les végétaux et l'homme, des particules émises par le procédé de recyclage du plomb en relation avec leurs propriétés physico-chimiques. Trois sources principales d'émissions de particules ont été identifiées dans le procédé du recyclage du plomb et caractérisées en vue d'étudier les impacts potentiels sur les cibles végétales et humaines. Les particules échantillonnées (postes de travail et émissions canalisées) et ségréguées en fonction de leur taille (PMtot, PM10 et PM2,5) sont principalement composées de métaux (jusqu'à 50% en masse de la composition totale en métaux de transition, alcalins et alcalino-terreux), avec une majeur partie de plomb (25-45 %). Les spéciations majoritaires du plomb sont la galène (PbS), le sulfate du plomb (PbSO4) ou dérivés (xPbO.PbSO4 x=1,2 ou 3). L'étude du transfert des particules dans le sytème sol-plante a montré que, lorsque la taille des particules de process présentes dans le sol diminue (de 10µm à 2.5µm), le tranfert du plomb vers les parties aériennes des salades augmente de 20%. Le transfert foliaire de plomb issu des particules de process a été mis en évidence et des mécanismes d'absorption.ont été proposés. Enfin, l'étude exploratoire des particules riches en plomb sur la santé humaine a permis de montrer que la diminition de la taille des particules ingérées augmentait la bioaccessibilité gastrique du plomb. Dans le cas de l'inhalation, il a été démontré que les particules n'induisaient pas de cytotoxicité jusqu'à 50µg/cm2, mais provoquaient une réponse inflammatoire dose-dépendante des cellules épithéliales pulmonaires. / Since the Industrial Revolution in Europe (XIXe century), human activities have caused significant global environmental changes. The composition of the atmosphere in particular, has been extensively modified by the emission of gaseous and particulate pollutants. Currently, the secondary (or recycling) metallurgical industry contributes significantly to air emissions of metals. Therefore, this thesis focused on the study of transfers and impacts on soils, plants and humans, of particles from the recycling process of lead in relation to their physicochemical properties. Three main sources of particulate emissions have been identified in the process of recycling lead and characterized, to study the potential impacts on plant and human targets. The particles sampled (workstations and channelled emissions), and segregated according to their size (PMtot, PM10 and PM2, 5), are mainly composed of metals (up to 50% by weight of the total composition in transition metals alkaline and alkaline), with a major part of lead (25-45%). The major speciations of lead are galena (PbS), lead sulfate (PbSO4) or derivatives (xPbO.PbSO4 x = 1,2 or 3). The study of transfer of particles in the soil-plant system has shown that when the particle size of processes in the soil decreases (from 2.5µm to 10µm), the transfer of lead into the aerial parts of lettuce growing at 20 %. The uptake of lead from particles process by leaves has been demonstrated and mechanisms of absorption have been proposed. Finally, exploratory study of lead-rich particles on human health has shown that diminution of the size of particles ingested increased gastric bioaccessibility of lead. In the case of inhalation, it was shown that the particles did not induce cytotoxicity up 50µg/cm2, but caused a dose-dependent inflammatory response of lung epithelial cells