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The experiences of past efforts of industrial pollution control while maintaining competitiveness should be of great value to research and policy practice addressing sustainability issues today. In this article, we analyze the environmental adaptation of the Swedish pulp industry during the period 1970–1990 as illustrated by the sulfite pulp producer Domsjö mill. We investigate how this company managed to adapt to heavy transformation pressure from increasing international competition in combination with strict national environmental regulations during the 1960s to the early 1990s. In line with the so-called Porter hypothesis, the company was able to coordinate the problems that were environmental in nature with activities aiming at production efficiency goals and the development of new products. Swedish environmental agencies and legislation facilitated this ―win-win‖ situation by a flexible but still challenging regulatory approach towards the company. From the early 1990s and onwards, the greening of the pulp industry was also a result of increased market pressure for green paper products.

Thesis advisor: Hideo Konishi / This paper will review prior research to support the notion that innovation does in fact lead to a competitive advantage for business, and that this competitive advantage is translated into increased profitability and productivity. Though the body of work reviewed here will by no means unequivocally prove that this relationship always holds true in real-world markets, it will provide a convincing argument that fostering innovation will likely have positive economic affects. Building off this assumption, this paper will then focus specifically on examining the relationship between environmental regulation and innovation in more detail. This paper looks to answer the question: Under what conditions will environmental regulation cause firms to begin choosing to innovate technologically rather than simply to meet regulation with compliance? Using a simple model of price competition between two firms it will be shown that environmental regulation can effectively induce innovation through spending on R&D projects to develop more efficient technology. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics.

Abstract The impact of environmental regulation on competitiveness is a major issue of concern to policy makers. It has also been the subject of considerable academic debate in the past few years on environment-competitiveness. The relationship between environmental goals and industrial competitiveness has conventionally been thought of as involving a tradeoff between social benefits and private costs. In the recent decade, the environment-competitiveness debate has been shifted to a new dynamic international competitiveness paradigm. Michael Porter suggested that the traditional trade-off between environmental regulation and competitiveness may have overestimated environmental compliance costs, neglected innovation offsets, and disregarded the affected industry's initial competitiveness. In this thesis, we aim to examine firm-level evidence to assess the Porter hypothesis as well as the basic correlation between environmental goals and industrial competitiveness. Our approach mainly concentrates on the possibility of Porter hypothesis. Porter hypothesis suggests that more severe environmental regulation may have a positive effect on firm¡¦s performance by stimulating innovation. To capture the dynamic impacts and the incurred adjustments for enterprises in complying with the environmental standard requires a model with dynamic adjustment features. Our investigation shows that the impact of environmental regulation on TFP growth rate could become less detrimental and even positive, confirming the Porter hypothesis. This dynamic pattern is seen clearly in our results in many samples.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(地球環境学) / 甲第24057号 / 地環博第220号 / 新制||地環||42(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院地球環境学舎地球環境学専攻 / (主査)准教授 森 晶寿, 教授 宇佐美 誠, 准教授 吉野 章 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Global Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DFAM

This thesis consists of five papers, four of them basically concerning environmental issues, while the fifth paper addresses the issue of measuring output from the educational sector. The first paper starts from the fact that industrial activity causes environmental damage. Therefore, public authorities are called upon to regulate the behavior of producers by, e.g., legislating maximally allowed emission levels, which give rise to abatement costs. In this paper, marginal abatement costs (MACs) are estimated and a procedure to empirically analyze why MACs may vary between producers is suggested. The main focus is on whether the MACs in the Swedish pulp industry reveal that differences between counties in, e.g., economical characteristics, were influential when the authority, during 1983-1990, restricted 12 geographically scattered plants regarding emissions. The result indicates that county differences were influential. The second paper analyses and suggests a procedure for testing the Porter hypothesis. Part of this hypothesis is based on the argument that increased environmental stringency not only brings a cleaner environment, but also makes the polluting producers aware of the opportunity of using resources more efficiently. The particular test suggested considers whether there is a positive correlation between producers’ technical output efficiency and environmental stringency, approximated by a regulatory intensity index. It is empirically applied on 12 Swedish pulp plants during 1983-1990. No support for the Porter hypothesis is found in this particular case. The third paper deals with the climate policy issue. Under the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union agreed to reduce its emission of greenhouse gases by 8 percent in comparison with the level in 1990. The Burden-Sharing Agreement (BSA) further redistributes the 8 percent reduction target among the member states. This paper evaluates the BSA both from an economical and a political perspective, i.e., whether cost-efficiency and equity, respectively, were considered when the BSA was settled. The empirical result indicates that both efficiency and equity were considered as important to the BSA. The fourth paper evaluates the Swedish Producer Responsibility Ordinance (PRO), fully implemented in 1994, which states that sorted out, domestically collected waste paper, must be recycled by the paper industry and, therefore, cannot be incinerated by the heating industry in purpose of recovering energy. The result indicates that this policy has contributed to inefficient waste paper allocation among some of the paper producers. The result further indicates that the priority made by the PRO, i.e., that waste paper recycling is preferable to incineration, should be reconsidered. The fifth paper relates the empirical attempts of measuring output from the educational sector to theoretical results about the welfare significance of a comprehensive Net National Product (NNP) measure. It is shown that economic theory provides a more focused way of interpreting such output estimates. The paper also contains estimates of the output from the Swedish educational sector. Among the results, it is shown that the private gross output value produced by higher education is approximately 2 percent of GDP. Furthermore, the private rate of return on investments in higher education in Sweden is calculated to 8.6 percent.

Submitted by Neusa Fagundes (neusa.fagundes@unioeste.br) on 2018-02-26T12:52:20Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Hillary_Fujihara2017.pdf: 2682445 bytes, checksum: d46fdf053f1e8d09c75fd1dbd29b2aa7 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-02-26T12:52:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Hillary_Fujihara2017.pdf: 2682445 bytes, checksum: d46fdf053f1e8d09c75fd1dbd29b2aa7 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-08-31 / The present research aims to verify if the environmental regulation of Cascavel promotes and encourages innovation in the ten mechanical workshops that founded the Automotive Business Center - CNA of the Association of Micro and Small Businesss of the West of Paraná - AMIC. As well, if this innovation leads to greater financial and competitive performance in these companies. For that, we chose to use a multiple case study, with data collection, through structured interviews with the ten entrepreneurs surveyed, application of the questionnaire from MPE Brazil SEBRAE (2015a) and interview with five experts from the area of competitiveness and sustainability. Data analysis was used to content analysis. It was found that after the adjustments required by environmental regulations, the studied companies presented positive results in competitiveness, quality, productivity, innovation, sustainability, profitability or profitability, according to to the Porter Hypothesis – HP. However, it was not possible to prove or refute HP, for failing to comply with its main premise, which is rigid legislation. And there is still no effective oversight of all Cascavelian companies. It should be noted that in the bibliographical survey conducted in 2015, only two surveys were found in small companies, one in service and none in automotive repair providers, so the present research brings contributions to a sector and size, not yet explored By HP researchers. / A presente pesquisa tem por objetivo verificar se a regulamentação ambiental de Cascavel promove e incentiva à inovação nas dez oficinas mecânicas que fundaram a Central de Negócios Automotivos – CNA da Associação de Microempresas e Empresas de Pequeno Porte do Oeste do Paraná – AMIC. Bem como, se essa inovação acarreta em maior desempenho financeiro e competitivo nestas empresas. Para tanto, optou-se pelo uso de estudo de casos múltiplos, com coleta de dados, por meio de entrevistas estruturadas com os dez empresários pesquisados, aplicação do questionário do MPE Brasil SEBRAE (2015a) e entrevista com cinco especialistas da área de competitividade e sustentabilidade. Para a análise dos dados empregou-se análise de conteúdo. Verificou-se que após as adequações ambientais, exigidas pela regulamentação ambiental, as empresas estudadas apresentaram resultados positivos, em competitividade, qualidade, produtividade, inovação, sustentabilidade, lucratividade ou rentabilidade, conforme prevê a Hipótese de Porter – HP. Entretanto, não foi possível comprovar ou refutar a HP, por não cumprir a principal premissa da mesma, que é uma legislação rígida. Pois, ainda não há uma fiscalização efetiva a todas empresas cascavelenses. Destaca-se que, no levantamento bibliográfico realizado em 2015, encontrou-se apenas duas pesquisas em pequenas empresas, uma em serviço e nenhum sobre prestadores de reparos automotivos, portanto, a presente pesquisa traz contribuições para um setor e porte, ainda não muito explorado pelos pesquisadores da HP.

As the clothing industry is influenced by fierce competition and fast changing trends, firms must handle high stakeholder pressure such as for example, increased environmental and social awareness. According to the UN (2019), the clothing industry is the second biggest polluter to the environment, thus demonstrating the urgent need for CSR initiatives to make significant impact in this industry. In fact, many firms have been innovative, but the benefits from these innovations have yet to be seen.  The main purpose of this study is to understand how innovation and CSR can be combined to offer value for stakeholdersin the clothing industry and evaluate this through the relationship of the Porter hypothesis, stakeholder theory and value co-creation. This thesis adopts a mixed-method approach by responses from interviews and from a self-completing questionnaire. This is supported by the analysis of secondary data reports from firms in the clothing industry and governmental institutions. The results of this study conclude that firms experience two forms of stakeholder pressure which forces them to innovate, supporting the argument for the ‘strong’ form of the Porter hypothesis. Furthermore, it finds that value creation is inextricably linked to stakeholder theory.

- / The PhD thesis is about measurement and effects of environmental policy in the context of the Porter Hypothesis (PH). The first chapter offers a critical review of the large empirical literature on the Porter Hypothesis. The second chapter presents an empirical investigation of the Porter Hypothesis focusing on the manufacturing sectors of European countries between 1997 and 2009. We look at overall innovation and productivity impact that are the most relevant indicators for the “strong” PH. This approach allows us to account for potential opportunity costs of induced innovations. As a proxy of environmental policy stringency we use pollution abatement and control expenditures (PACE), which represent one of the few indicators available at the sectoral level. We remedy upon its main drawback, that of potential endogeneity of PACE, by adopting an instrumental variable estimation approach. The third chapter represents a novel approach, inspired by the literature on multilevel latent models and Item Response Theory, to assessing countries’ environmental and energy policy performance. We use data on energy efficiency policy targeting industrial sectors in 27 EU countries between 2004 and 2009 and rank countries with respect to their ability to implement policy over time. Unlike previous contributions in this respect, our model accounts for the inherent difficulty of a given policy instrument mix. Moreover, the model is extended to deal with the longitudinal data and to adjust the country ranking as a result of economic and institutional observables, which are likely to affect policy design and implementation.

Le Chapitre 1 propose un survol de la littérature consacrée à l'éco-innovation. A la lumière des travaux passés en revue, l'éco-innovation n’est pas encore un concept bien stabilisé : sa définition même continue d'évoluer, appelant des corrections et des précisions. Ce chapitre accorde une attention particulière au rôle de la règlementation, qui est souvent présentée dans la littérature comme un déterminant essentiel de l'éco-innovation, notamment quand l'innovation concerne un procédé de fabrication. Une controverse demeure à ce propos, en particulier quand la règlementation repose sur des normes environnementales peu contraignantes, voire facultatives (telle la norme ISO 14001). Le processus de diffusion de l'éco-innovation est un autre objet de controverse dans la littérature.[...]. Le Chapitre 2 va donc s'intéresser au premier point de controverse, à savoir le rôle des règlementations environnementales ayant une dimension facultative, comme les normes de type ISO 14001. A l'aide d'une analyse par appariement sur les scores de propension, nous examinons l'effet de l'adoption de normes de type ISO 140001 sur la performance des entreprises (mesurée à partir de la Valeur Ajoutée).[...] Le Chapitre 3 s'intéresse à savoir le processus de diffusion de l'éco-innovation. En raison des contraintes posées par les données disponibles, cette investigation se fait du point de vue des barrières à, et des déterminants de, l'innovation environnementale.[...] Le Chapitre 4 exploitant les données des Enquêtes Communautaires sur l'Innovation de 2008 (CIS 2008), qui contiennent un module spécifiquement dédié à l’éco-innovation. Ainsi, à la différence du chapitre 3, nous établissons – à l'aide du module spécifique de l'enquête – une typologie originale permettant de distinguer, parmi les entreprises éco-innovantes: (1) les entreprises adoptant une éco-innovation de manière passive, (2) les entreprises adoptant tardivement une éco-innovation de manière stratégique, (3) les entreprises adoptant précocement une éco-innovation de manière stratégique, (4) les éco-innovateurs stratégiques tardifs et (5) les éco-innovateurs stratégiques précoces.[...] / Environmental innovation or eco-innovation is considered one of the most significant paradigm shifts in the innovation behaviour. The specificity of eco innovation lies in the fact that environmental improvement, in addition to technological advancement, is the main reason of its development. By combining these two objectives, eco-innovation has become one of primary tools in the search to solve the world’s environmental problems and sustainability challenges. Despite its prevalence, there is still more to be discovered within the eco-innovation literature. The drivers of and barriers to eco-innovation discussion is one of the most significant amongst all. More notably, the role of a firm’s social, technological, economic and organizational characteristics within the eco-innovation process has been little studied. With this Ph.D. thesis we aim to fill the existing gap with four distinct research articles. [...] Chapter 2 investigates, firstly, whether firms’ internal characteristics have an impact on the adoption of voluntary environmental standards. Secondly, the causal effect of adoption of environmental standards on the firms performance. Based on the empirical evidence obtained, we show that medium-size, high-tech manufacturing firms operating at the EU level and using quality standards are more likely to adopt these standards earlier. [...] In Chapter 3, we stressed the significance of a firm’s structural characteristics in another context and aimed at investigating the role these characteristics play in realization of product and/or process eco-innovation. [...] In Chapter 4 we moved forward the analyses conducted in Chapter 3 to another context and examined the influence of firm’s economic, technological, organisational capabilities on the eco-innovation behaviour for different types of product, process, organisational or marketing eco-innovators. The results of our empirical analyses point out the marginal impacts of firm’s characteristics changes with respect to type of eco-innovator. [...]