This study investigates induced productivity effects of firms introducing new environmental technologies. The literature on within-firm organisational change and productivity suggests that firms can achieve higher productivity gains from adopting new technologies if they adapt their...

The relationship between growth and pollution is studied through a vintage capital model, where new technology is more environmentally friendly. We find that once the optimal scrapping age of technologies is reached, an economy may achieve two possible cases of sustainable development, one in...

Are efficiency improvements in the use of natural resources the key for sustainable development, are they the solution to environmental problems, or will second round effects - so-called rebound effects - compensate or even overcompensate potential savings, will they fire back? The answer to...

The paper looks at a model of directed technical change in an environmental-economics context. Firms can do conventional or "green" R&D or they can abate emissions at the end of pipe. The paper has two main foci. On the one hand, it investigates the impact of environmental regulation on the...

The performance of market based environmental regulation is affected by patents and vice versa. This interaction is studied for a new type of innovation where new technologies reduce emissions of a specific pollutant but at the same time cause a new type of damage. A robust finding is that the...

Emission allowances are often distributed for free in an early phase of a cap-and-trade scheme (grandfathering) to reduce adverse effects on the profitability of firms. If the grandfathering scheme is phased out over time, firms may nevertheless relocate to countries with a lower carbon price...

International carbon offsets have been promoted since the Kyoto Protocol and an increasing number of countries have implemented or proposed cap-and-trade schemes with international trading, even though with quantitative or qualitative restrictions. Those limits reflect the trade-off between...

This paper investigates the impact of alternative environmental policy instruments on technological innovations aiming to improve energy-efficiency in buildings. The empirical analysis focuses on three main types of policy instruments, namely regulatory energy standards in buildings codes,...

We show that a technological breakthrough that reduces CO2 emissions per output can exacerbate the climate change problem: countries may respond by raising their emissions resulting in an increase of the stock of pollution that may reduce welfare. Using parameter values based on empirical...

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,...