Title: The effect of internationalisation and regulation on environmental efficiency: an empirical analysis of Spanish companies

Authors: Juan A. Román-Aso; Jaime Vallés-Giménez

Addresses: Facultad de Comunicación y Ciencias Sociales, Universidad San Jorge, Campus Universitario de Villanueva de Gállego, Autovía A-23 Zaragoza-Huesca, Km. 299, 50830 Villanueva de Gállego, Zaragoza, Spain ' Economic Structure Department, University of Zaragoza, Gran Via 2, 50005 Zaragoza, Spain

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of pollution taxes, the emissions trading system and internationalisation on environmental efficiency. To this end, we first estimate it for 100 industrial plants in Spain over a period of 11 years, 2001-2011, using a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). The first two factors are included to test whether stronger environmental regulations improve efficiency, in line with the Porter hypothesis. The last is devoted to examine whether multinational companies are more efficient than local ones. Our empirical results reveal that pollution taxes do not produce the expected outcome for the entire sample, but in contrast, the emissions trading system has a significant and positive effect on efficiency. Finally, multinational companies are not more efficient, in contrast with previous studies.

Keywords: efficiency; internationalisation; stochastic Frontier analysis; pollution taxes; emission trading system.

DOI: 10.1504/IJETM.2019.102204

International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management, 2019 Vol.22 No.2/3, pp.189 - 206

Accepted: 02 Jun 2019
Published online: 10 Sep 2019 *

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