Collaborative Research: Pollution Mitigation and Productivity in Developing Countries

合作研究：发展中国家的污染减排和生产力

基本信息

批准号：
1824348
负责人：
Gautam Gowrisankaran
金额：
$ 20.28万
依托单位：
University of Arizona
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2018
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2018-09-01 至 2021-08-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1824348&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Collaborative Research Pollution Mitigation Productivity

项目摘要

The economies of many developing countries have experienced huge transformations over the past 20 years, but a major cost of development has been air and water pollution. The fact that pollution remains a central problem suggests that it may be very costly to mitigate pollution, in terms of lost productivity and revenues. An opposing view is the "Porter hypothesis" that postulates that environmental policies lead to greater productivity. The current empirical evidence on these tradeoffs is both limited and ambiguous, with some studies finding a substantial productivity cost of pollution mitigation and others finding evidence in favor of the Porter hypothesis. This research conducts a detailed empirical evaluation of whether policies in developing countries to lower pollution have been successful. The investigators also quantify the productivity and distributional costs of these policies. This research investigates these questions for both the manufacturing and power generation sectors. This research makes a significant contribution to intellectual merit, through its use of novel data, its innovative identification, and its use of frontier methods. This research is among the first to combine firm-level panel datasets on industrial production, power plant investment in environmental mitigation technologies, and air and water pollution discharges, in developing or developed countries. The investigators develop new sources of identification to understand pollution in developing countries by focusing on panel variation in environmental discharge fees and pollution reduction mandates. Using the detailed data, the investigators also evaluate whether pollution mitigation policies cause firms to invest in new mitigation technologies or simply reduce their output.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

过去20年，许多发展中国家的经济经历了巨大转型，但发展的主要成本是空气和水污染。污染仍然是一个核心问题的事实表明，就生产力和收入损失而言，减轻污染的代价可能非常高昂。一种相反的观点是“波特假说”，该假说假设环境政策会带来更高的生产力。目前关于这些权衡的经验证据既有限又模糊，一些研究发现减轻污染会带来巨大的生产力成本，而另一些研究则发现支持波特假说的证据。本研究对发展中国家降低污染的政策是否成功进行了详细的实证评估。研究人员还量化了这些政策的生产力和分配成本。这项研究调查了制造和发电行业的这些问题。这项研究通过使用新颖的数据、创新的识别以及前沿方法的使用，为智力价值做出了重大贡献。这项研究是首批将发展中国家或发达国家的工业生产、电厂投资环境缓解技术以及空气和水污染排放的企业级面板数据集结合起来的研究之一。调查人员通过关注环境排放费和污染减排任务的面板变化，开发了新的识别来源，以了解发展中国家的污染情况。研究人员还利用详细数据评估污染减排政策是否会导致企业投资新的减排技术或只是减少产量。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响进行评估，被认为值得支持审查标准。