Does Rent-seeking Affect Environmental Regulation? Evidence from The Survey Data of Private Enterprises in China

2022 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 0-0

Resource utilization not only meets the needs of economic development, but also has a far-reaching negative impact on the environment. Environmental regulation is regarded as the key measure to solve environmental pollution. However, the rent-seeking behavior of local enterprises will seriously weaken the implementation effect of environmental regulations. Under the background of the development of big data era, the massive micro enterprise data provided by China's private enterprise survey database provides favorable conditions for this paper to study its impact effect from the direction of big data. This paper uses OLS model and Tobit model to investigate the impact of rent-seeking on the implementation effect of environmental regulation. The results show that environmental regulation will make honest enterprises actively reduce output to control the emission level. However, rent-seeking enterprises will further expand their output to gain greater profits because they are sheltered by local governments.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3960
Author(s):  
Meng-Meng Geng ◽  
Ling-Yun He

It is a problem worth thinking about whether the government’s environmental regulation policies can meet the residents’ requirements for environmental quality, and benefit the people. The study of the public’s subjective evaluation can more intuitively judge whether the government’s environmental regulation has realized “ecological benefits for the people”. Based on the data of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) in 2013, this paper studied the impact of environmental regulation and environmental awareness on environmental governance satisfaction by an ordered probit model. The study found that environmental regulation has a significant positive impact on environmental governance satisfaction, while environmental awareness has a significant negative impact on environmental governance satisfaction. We also found that when public environmental awareness is taken into account, the positive relationship between environmental regulation and environmental governance satisfaction is affected. The robustness test proved this conclusion.


Author(s):  
Yinhao Wu ◽  
Shumin Yu ◽  
Xiangdong Duan

Pollution-intensive industries (PIIs) have both scale effect and environmental sensitivity. Therefore, this paper studies how environmental regulation (ER) affects the location dynamics of PIIs under the agglomeration effect. Our results show that, ER can increase the production costs of pollution-intensive firms (PIFs) by internalizing the negative impact of pollutant discharge in a region, and thus, directly reduces the region’s attractiveness to PIFs. Meanwhile, ER can indirectly reduce the attractiveness of a region to PIFs by reducing the externality of the regional agglomeration effect. Moreover, these influences are regulated by the level of local economic development. Based on the moderated mediating effect model, we find evidence from the site selection activities of newly built chemical firms in cities across China. The empirical test shows that compared with 2014, the proportion of the direct effect of ER to the total effects significantly decreased in 2018, while the proportion of indirect effects under the agglomeration effect increased significantly. Our findings provide reference for the government to design effective environmental policies to guide the location choice of new PIFs.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Constantina Costopoulou ◽  
Maria Ntaliani ◽  
Filotheos Ntalianis

Local governments are increasingly developing electronic participation initiatives, expecting citizen involvement in local community affairs. Our objective was to assess e-participation and the extent of its change in local government in Greece. Using content analysis for 325 Greek municipal websites, we assessed e-participation status in 2017 and 2018 and examined the impact of change between these years. The assessment regards two consecutive years since the adoption of digital technologies by municipalities has been rapid. The main findings show that Greek local governments have made significant small- to medium-scale changes, in order to engage citizens and local societies electronically. We conclude that the integration of advanced digital technologies in municipalities remains underdeveloped. We propose that Greek municipalities need to consider incorporating new technologies, such as mobile apps, social media and big data, as well as e-decision making processes, in order to eliminate those obstacles that hinder citizen engagement in local government. Moreover, the COVID-19 outbreak has highlighted the need for enhancing e-participation and policymakers’ coordination through advanced digital technologies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 206 ◽  
pp. 02001
Author(s):  
Ziting Wei

Based on the perspective of environmental regulation, this paper selects panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2016, establishes Hansen panel threshold regression model, and investigates the impact of FDI on environmental technology innovation of industrial enterprises in China under the threshold of environmental regulation. The results show that FDI has a significant inhibitory effect on the environmental technological innovation of industrial enterprises; the effect has a significant dual threshold of environmental regulation, with the intensity of environmental regulation across the threshold, the negative impact of FDI gradually weakened; market demand and industry scale have a significant positive impact, the role of technological progress is not significant. The findings of this paper provide a certain reference for the rational use of environmental regulation policies, the maximization of FDI technology spillover, the promotion of environmental technology innovation of industrial enterprises, and the realization of “win-win” of environment and economy.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Micaela Di Consiglio ◽  
Sheila Merola ◽  
Tiziana Pascucci ◽  
Cristiano Violani ◽  
Alessandro Couyoumdjian

BACKGROUND To reduce the spread of Covid-19 the Italian government imposed a rigid lockdown and, for a whole year, it kept declaring stringent rules to curb the community spread. The pandemic had a great negative impact on general population mental health, including the one of university students. OBJECTIVE The study provides an overview about symptomatology and help-seeking behavior of university students before and during the Covid-19 pandemic and it aims to evaluate the impact of the different phases of the pandemic on students' mental health. METHODS We collected data in four time points: (1) March 2019-February 2020, (2) March-May 2020, (3) October-December 2020, (4) January 2020-March 2021. A total of 454 students have been included in the study. Students answered a socio-demographic questionnaire and a standardized questionnaire to evaluate a broad range of symptoms of psychopathology. Descriptive analyses have been conducted to explore student’s symptomatology and help-seeking behavior. Considering the significant gender-difference distribution between groups, groups comparison analysis has been conducted considering male and female separately. RESULTS Considering the total sample size, results suggest that students have experienced moderate to severe levels of depressive, obsessive-compulsive and anxiety symptomatology. About 14% of the sample met criteria for at least one mental health disorders, but most of them were not receiving mental health care. Moreover, during the lockdown, compared with other phases, female students reported worse symptoms in the following dimension: obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, paranoid ideation and psychoticism. The increasing symptomatology quickly disappeared after the lifting of the quarantine. Results showed any difference in the male groups. CONCLUSIONS Our findings support the view of a negative mental health condition of university students and indicate an increase of symptomatology during the lockdown among female students. Preventive and support strategies should be improved in the university context.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Mohammed Sabra

<p>This article investigates the impact of remittances on economic growth, investment and domestic savings in selected MENA labor exporting countries. The estimations have been done in the presence of other international capital inflow, which are foreign aid and foreign direct investment. A multiple equations model estimated simultaneously using different techniques. We found a positive impact of remittances on both growth and investment, meanwhile a negative impact on domestic savings. Aid impacts negatively on both growth and savings where it finance consumption instead of investment and enhance rent seeking behavior. Government expenditure and FDI are important source of growth. We recommended that policies for encouraging final use of productive investment of remittances. In addition, enhancing more project of migrant in home country that may facilitate their trade with host countries. Finally, more efficient allocation of aid is requires, and attracting more FDI.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongyang Wang ◽  
Baizhou Li

AbstractThe high-quality development of the manufacturing industry is an important strategic task for Chinese economic development. The rapid development of the manufacturing industry is also accompanied by problems such as overcapacity and environmental pollution. This paper analyzes the impact of capacity utilization on the high-quality development of manufacturing and establishes a nonlinear threshold regression model on this basis, and studies and analyzes environmental regulations as a threshold variable under the influence of capacity utilization rate on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry. The research results show that: capacity utilization, profitability, foreign direct investment, and government participation all have a significant positive impact on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry; environmental regulations have a significant negative impact on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry. And in the model of the effect of capacity utilization on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry, environmental regulation has a single threshold effect. With the increase in the intensity of environmental regulation, the coefficient and significance of the effect of capacity utilization on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry have changed. Finally, this article puts forward corresponding policies and suggestions based on the results of data analysis.


Author(s):  
Jian Hou ◽  
Yifang An ◽  
Hongfeng Song ◽  
Jiancheng Chen

“The Gray Great Wall” formed by haze pollution is an increasingly serious issue in China, and the resulting air pollution has brought severe challenges to human health, the socio-economy and the world ecosystem. Based on the facts above, this paper uses China’s province-level panel data from 2009 to 2016, systematically measures the heterogeneous structure of regional ecological economic (eco-economic) treatment efficiency through a Super Slacks-Based Measure (SBM) model and dynamic threshold models, and analyzes the forcing mechanism of haze pollution pressure on regional eco-economic treatment efficiency from an environmental regulation perspective. Results indicated that China’s eco-economic treatment has been vigorously promoted, which is significantly conducive to green growth upgrading. However, the process has a large developmental scope due to regional heterogeneity. Interestingly, the forcing impact of haze pollution on regional eco-economic treatment efficiency is limited by the “critical mass” of environmental regulations: a weak degree of regulation will facilitate an increase in regional eco-economic treatment efficiency through the forcing effect of haze pollution pressure. Once environmental regulation reaches a critical level, a stronger degree of regulation will suppress the forcing effect of haze pollution in turn and it will decrease the regional eco-economic treatment efficiency. This paper endeavors to clarify the differences, suitability and dependency in the process of ecological transformation for Chinese local governments in different regions and provide policy references for a regional ecological transformation matching system.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zaiyang Xie ◽  
Liang Qu ◽  
Runhui Lin ◽  
Qiutong Guo

PurposeEnvironmental regulation is in a continuous state of intense change and modification amid the long-term tensions between environmental protection and economic growth. In this article, the authors creatively investigate how fluctuations of environmental regulation influence a nation's economic growth while also examining the mediating effect of technological innovation.Design/methodology/approachUsing sample data of 36 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from 2013 to 2018, environmental regulation is differentiated in two aspects of formal environmental regulation (FER) and informal environmental regulation (IER) and analyzed to assess the effects of regulatory fluctuations on investment and technological innovation.FindingsThe research results demonstrate that both FER fluctuation and IER fluctuation exert a significant negative impact on economic growth. These two fluctuations in environmental regulation increase uncertainty and unpredictable risks for corporations and investors, significantly stifling the willingness to contribute to innovation activities and leading to a diminished level of innovation. Technological innovation is revealed to have a mediating influence on the relationship of environmental regulation fluctuation to economic growth.Originality/valueThese findings enrich the research on the impact of environmental regulation from a dynamic, multinational perspective, contributing to the literature by exploring the relationships between environmental regulation fluctuation, technological innovation and economic growth at the OECD-country level.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 2214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guichuan Zhou ◽  
Wendi Liu ◽  
Liming Zhang ◽  
Kaiwen She

Previous studies indicate that the Porter hypothesis (PH) generates controversial and inconsistent conclusions on the impact of environmental regulation (ER) on business performance. As a result, based on the data of China’s A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2018, a moderated mediating effect model is established to examine the relationship between ER, technological innovation and business performance, as well as the moderating effect of environmental regulation flexibility (ERF) on the relationship. Results show that technological innovation has a significant mediating effect on the relationship between ER and business performance. Furthermore, ERF has a negative moderating effect on the mediating effect technological innovation exerted. At a certain degree, the flexible ER could weaken technological innovation’s mediating effects on the relationship between ER and business performance, and further could mitigate the negative impact of ER on both technological innovation and business performance. Also, an inflexible ER intensifies its negative effects on technological innovation and business performance, which is to the disadvantage of enterprises becoming the subject of environmental protection consciously and sustainably.


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