The "pollution haven" hypothesis states that multinational firms, particularly those in highly polluting industries, relocate to countries with weak environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, Smarzynska and Wei find only weak evidence in its favor.

A pollution haven may arise if environmental stringency differs between countries, when capital is mobile, and when trade rules allow firms to relocate and still sell their products to the same customers. This cohesive volume analyzes how country characteristics determine environmental rules, how those rules affect production costs, trade, and investment flows, how those flows affect pollution, prices, and incomes, and finally how all of these last considerations feed back into environmental rules. The sixteen papers collected here represent the most recent and significant advancements of knowledge on the subject. The contributors, all well-known scholars in the area, investigate how polluter location decisions respond to pollution policies, how local environmental rules respond to those location decisions, and how trade liberalization affects the incentives of governments to regulate dirty industries. The volume begins with a comprehensive overview by M. Scott Taylor and goes on to explore how the usual effects of pollution havens can be reversed. Also covered are the ways in which managed trade and trade liberalization, the regulation of multinationals, political stability and emissions controls impact pollution havens. Written for a multidisciplinary audience, The Economics of Pollution Havens will be of interest to those working in the areas of economics, international trade, political science, public policy, and environmental studies.

“The authors make some very critical interventions in this debate and scholars engaged in the environmental ‘pollution haven’ and ‘race to the bottom’ debates will need to take the arguments made here seriously, re-evaluating their own preferred theories to respond to the insightful theorizing and empirically rigorous testing that Zeng and Eastin present in the book.” —Ronald Mitchell, University of Oregon China has earned a reputation for lax environmental standards that allegedly attract corporations more interested in profit than in moral responsibility and, consequently, further negate incentives to raise environmental standards. Surprisingly, Ka Zeng and Joshua Eastin find that international economic integration with nation-states that have stringent environmental regulations facilitates the diffusion of corporate environmental norms and standards to Chinese provinces. At the same time, concerns about “green” tariffs imposed by importing countries encourage Chinese export-oriented firms to ratchet up their own environmental standards. The authors present systematic quantitative and qualitative analyses and data that not only demonstrate the ways in which external market pressure influences domestic environmental policy but also lend credence to arguments for the ameliorative effect of trade and foreign direct investment on the global environment.

This paper presents evidence on whether multinationals are flocking to developing country 'pollution havens'. Although we find some evidence that foreign investors locate in sectors with high levels of air pollution, the evidence is weak at best. We then examine whether foreign firms pollute less than their peers. We find that foreign plants are significantly more energy efficient and use cleaner types of energy. We conclude with an analysis of US outbound investment. Although the pattern of US foreign investment is skewed towards industries with high costs of pollution abatement, the results are not robust across specifications.

Energy has a wide range of uses within a country, includin socially and economically. Providing everything from warmth and light to raw materials for industrial production, energy is an essential need for countries. Due to the importance of energy for countries, energy policies are extremely vital, and energy needs to be affordable, eco-friendly, and continuous so countries can provide for their people and continue to develop industrially. Without the availability of energy that is cheap and continuous, the effectiveness in the energy supply process will be reduced, and society will experience difficulties in having its daily energy needs met. The Handbook of Research on Strategic Management for Current Energy Investments analyzes current trends in energy production and use and identifies energy investment strategies in order to support affordable and available energy for all. Chapters within the book cover technological developments that contribute to the reduction of price in energy production as well as renewable energy sources that provide continuity in energy production but do not emit carbon into the atmosphere. This book highlights topics that cover environmental pollution, energy pricing, economic growth, carbon dioxide emission, and energy management. It is ideal for engineers, technicians, managers, researchers, academicians, policymakers, government officials, and students in related fields.

Nowhere has the divide between advocates and critics of globalization been more striking than in debates over free trade and the environment. And yet the literature on the subject is high on rhetoric and low on results. This book is the first to systematically investigate the subject using both economic theory and empirical analysis. Brian Copeland and Scott Taylor establish a powerful theoretical framework for examining the impact of international trade on local pollution levels, and use it to offer a uniquely integrated treatment of the links between economic growth, liberalized trade, and the environment. The results will surprise many. The authors set out the two leading theories linking international trade to environmental outcomes, develop the empirical implications, and examine their validity using data on measured sulfur dioxide concentrations from over 100 cities worldwide during the period from 1971 to 1986. The empirical results are provocative. For an average country in the sample, free trade is good for the environment. There is little evidence that developing countries will specialize in pollution-intensive products with further trade. In fact, the results suggest just the opposite: free trade will shift pollution-intensive goods production from poor countries with lax regulation to rich countries with tight regulation, thereby lowering world pollution. The results also suggest that pollution declines amid economic growth fueled by economy-wide technological progress but rises when growth is fueled by capital accumulation alone. Lucidly argued and authoritatively written, this book will provide students and researchers of international trade and environmental economics a more reliable way of thinking about this contentious issue, and the methodological tools with which to do so.

During the 1990s, the governments of South Asian countries acted as ‘facilitators’ to attract FDI. As a result, the inflow of FDI increased. However, to become an attractive FDI destination as China, Singapore, or Brazil, South Asia has to improve the local conditions of doing business. This book, based on research that blends theory, empirical evidence, and policy, asks and attempts to answer a few core questions relevant to FDI policy in South Asian countries: Which major reforms have succeeded? What are the factors that influence FDI inflows? What has been the impact of FDI on macroeconomic performance? Which policy priorities/reforms needed to boost FDI are pending? These questions and answers should interest policy makers, academics, and all those interested in FDI in the South Asian region and in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

The "pollution haven" hypothesis states that multinational firms, particularly those in highly polluting industries, relocate to countries with weak environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, Smarzynska and Wei find only weak evidence in its favor. The "pollution haven" hypothesis refers to the possibility that multinational firms, particularly those engaged in highly polluting activities, relocate to countries with weaker environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, there is little evidence to support it. Smarzynska and Wei identify four obstacles that may have impeded researchers' ability to find evidence in favor of the "pollution haven" hypothesis: - The possibility that some features of host countries, such as bureaucratic corruption, may deter inward foreign direct investment and also be positively correlated with lax environmental standards. Omitting this information in statistical analyses may produce misleading results. - The possibility that country- or industry-level data, typically used in the literature, may have masked the effect at the firm level. - Difficulties associated with measuring environmental standards of the host countries. - Difficulties associated with measuring the pollution intensity of the multinational firms. The authors attempt to surmount these obstacles by explicitly taking into account corruption in host countries and using a firm-level data set on investment projects in 24 transition economies. With these improvements, the authors find some support for the "pollution haven" hypothesis, but evidence is still weak and does not survive numerous robustness checks. This paper - a product of Trade, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study the effects of foreign direct investment on developing countries. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "Corruption, Pollution, and Location of International Capital Flows."

Over the past decades, governments have gradually adopted more rigorous environmental policies to tackle challenges associated with pressing environmental issues, such as climate change. The ambition of these policies is, however, often tempered by their perceived negative effects on the economy.

September 2001 The "pollution haven" hypothesis states that multinational firms, particularly those in highly polluting industries, relocate to countries with weak environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, Smarzynska and Wei find only weak evidence in its favor. The "pollution haven" hypothesis refers to the possibility that multinational firms, particularly those engaged in highly polluting activities, relocate to countries with weaker environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, there is little evidence to support it. Smarzynska and Wei identify four obstacles that may have impeded researchers' ability to find evidence in favor of the "pollution haven" hypothesis: * The possibility that some features of host countries, such as bureaucratic corruption, may deter inward foreign direct investment and also be positively correlated with lax environmental standards. Omitting this information in statistical analyses may produce misleading results. * The possibility that country- or industry-level data, typically used in the literature, may have masked the effect at the firm level. * Difficulties associated with measuring environmental standards of the host countries. * Difficulties associated with measuring the pollution intensity of the multinational firms. The authors attempt to surmount these obstacles by explicitly taking into account corruption in host countries and using a firm-level data set on investment projects in 24 transition economies. With these improvements, the authors find some support for the "pollution haven" hypothesis, but evidence is still weak and does not survive numerous robustness checks. This paper--a product of Trade, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to study the effects of foreign direct investment on developing countries. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "Corruption, Pollution, and Location of International Capital Flows." The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].