Environmental policy, Innovation, Patents, Renewable energy, Technological change, Q55, Q58, O34, O38,

Jaffe and Palmer (1997) present three distinct variants of the so‐called Porter Hypothesis. The “weak” version of the hypothesis posits that environmental regulation will stimulate environmental innovations. The “narrow” version of the hypothesis asserts that flexible environmental policy regimes give firms greater incentive to innovate than prescriptive regulations, such as technology‐based standards. Finally, the “strong” version posits that properly designed regulation may induce cost‐saving innovation that more than compensates for the cost of compliance. In this paper, we test the significance of these different variants of the Porter Hypothesis using data on the four main elements of the hypothesised causality chain (environmental policy, research and development, environmental performance, and commercial performance). The analysis draws upon a database that includes observations from approximately 4,200 facilities in seven OECD countries. In general, we find strong support for the “weak” version, qualified support for the “narrow” version, but no support for the “strong” version.

This paper examines the effect of environmental policies on technological innovation in the specific case of renewable energy. The analysis is conducted using patent data on a panel of 25 countries over the period 1978-2003. It is found that public policy plays a significant role in determining patent applications. Different types of policy instruments are effective for different renewable energy sources.

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This paper uses patent data to examine the impact of public environmental policy on innovations in environment-related technology. The analysis is conducted using data on an unbalanced panel of 77 countries between 2001 and 2007, drawing upon data obtained from the EPO World Patent Statistical (PATSTAT) database and the World Economic Forum's "Executive Opinion Survey". The results support our hypotheses concerning the positive role of both general innovative capacity and environmental policy stringency on environment-related innovation. A subsequent two-stage model assesses the factors which drive innovation in general and uses the fitted values to estimate environmental innovation. While the analysis is conducted on a smaller sample they confirm the findings of the reduced-form model.

SummaryApart from Drawers of Water (DOW I) published in 1972, there have been only a handful of published studies on domestic water use and environmental health in East Africa, based on direct observations or other reliable research methods. The objective of this study was to carry out a repeat analysis of domestic water use and environmental health in East Africa based on DOW I. The study was conducted in the same sites as DOW I. Field assistants spent at least 1 day in each household observing and conducting semi-structured interviews. They measured the amount of water collected, recorded the amount of water used in the home, and noted household socio-demographic characteristics, prevalence of diarrhoea, state and use of latrines, sources of water and conditions of use. We surveyed 1015 households in 33 sites in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya in 1997. From 1967to 1997, the prevalence of diarrhoea, in the week preceding the survey, increased from 6% to 18% in Kenya and from 16% to 21% in Uganda; it declined slightly in Tanzania (11-8%). Determinants of diarrhoea morbidity included poor hygiene (unsafe disposal of faeces and wastewater), education level of household head, obtaining water from surface sources or wells and per capita water used for cleaning. Hygiene practices are an important complement to improved water and sanitation in reducing diarrhoea morbidity.

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