The achievement of positive environmental performance at national level could strongly depend on differences in local capabilities of both institutions and the private business sector. Environmental regulation alone is a weak instrument if the institutional and business environment cannot...

This paper investigates the empirical link between emission intensity and economic growth, using a very large data set of 61,219 Italian manufacturing firms over the period 2000-2004. As a measure of lagged environmental performance (efficiency) at firm level we exploit NAMEA sector for CO2,...