The European Commission plans to tighten the greenhouse gas emissions targets in the Emissions Trading System. Ralf Martin and colleagues examine the likely impact on affected businesses, and conclude that industry is exploiting concerns about competitiveness to obtain free emission permits...

Nick Bloom and colleagues examine whether well-managed firms are more or less energy-efficient than badly managed firms

The economic crisis may offer an opportunity to set the world on the right track for addressing climate change, writes Ralf Martin.

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to support manufacturing jobs...

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to support manufacturing jobs...

By granting discounts on environmental taxes to heavy polluting firms, the government is missing out on significant tax revenues and achieving considerably less in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That is the central conclusion of research by Ralf Martin and colleagues, which reveals the...

When industry compensation is offered to prevent relocation of regulated firms, efficiency requires that payments be distributed across firms so as to equalize marginal relocation probabilities, weighted by the damage caused by relocation. We formalize this fundamental economic logic and apply...

We use an innovative methodology to measure management practices in over 300 manufacturing firms in the UK. We then match this management data to production and energy usage information for establishments owned by these firms. We find that establishments in better managed firms are significantly...

Much of recent Trade theory focuses on heterogeneity of firms and the differential impact trade policy might have on firms with different levels of productivity. A common problem is that most firm level dataset do not contain information on output prices of firms which makes it difficult to...

The Stern Review of the economics of climate change proposes a dramatic increase in public spending on research into carbon-mitigating technologies as well as market-based schemes for trading and taxing pollution. Ralf Martin suggests how these two policy elements might be most effectively combined.