Did transition bring cleaner air? Effects of ownership, territorial and technology policy on air pollution

Abstract

The paper investigates trends in air pollution in Poland during transition to a market economy. By analysing how the EU, national and regional development policy mix affects environmental outcomes we show the importance of context in terms of assessing the contribution to air pollution of different stakeholders such as foreign investors. The results show that while state owned firms pollute more, new domestic firms make a positive contribution to reducing emitted particulate matter and foreign owned subsidiaries on average have an increasing or neutral impact on air pollution. However, territorial policy becomes in Poland the focal point for understanding these changes as there are large differences for areas that are subject to this policy. When accounting for the combinations in these policies results suggest that zone governance has been very effective in reducing emissions of particulate matter. Zones combine ownership changes with technological changes associated with restructuring of enterprises and FDI along with EU subsidies associated with technology policies such as adoption of more green technologies in general. Both policy factors (e.g. using FDI to restructure former SOEs within the zones and using zones also as a policy tool to distribute structural funds) aid in reducing emissions, while to the extent we can compare them (due to differential measuring scales) we conclude that technology policy through structural funds has been by far the most effective policy tool towards curbing high emissions levels in Poland.

Soft and hard aspects of green behaviour: A firm-level study of the pollution haven hypothesis in the Mediterranean Basin

“…This is also, in part, because foreign firms are found to transfer, on average, cleaner technologies to China relative to what the private sector has adopted in this country. Very similar results were also found in Jensen and Mina (2019) in the context of Poland. Here similar pre-conditions exist in terms of inherited firms and technologies owing to the previous economic system.…”

“…In particular, the last issue critically requires stronger and more valid evidence, and only 4–7 studies were found in the literature that could be argued to have come close towards overcoming this major hurdle of investigation (with firm-level indicators - Eskeland and Harrison, 2003 , Javorcik and Wei, 2003 , Jiang et al., 2014 , Huang and Chang, 2019 and with territorial aggregates Greaney et al. (2017) , Shi and Xu (2018) and Jensen and Mina (2019) ). For example, out of the 13 firm-level studies on the impacts of inward or outward foreign direct investment (FDI) location decisions related to green behaviour reviewed by Dechezleprêtre and Sato (2017) , only one of the reported studies ( Eskeland and Harrison, 2003 ) included measures that directly equate with negative externalities such as energy intensity, pollution cost, or emissions of pollutants.…”

Assessing the effects of land transfer marketization on green total factor productivity from the perspective of resource allocation: Evidence from China

“…In the process of this adjustment, there are apparent differences in the production efficiency, pollution emission intensity, and pollution control strategies of these industries (Gross and Solymossy, 2016;Zhang et al, 2022). The transition from traditional inefficient industries to capitaland technology-intensive industries can not only improve the use of resources, but also contribute to the preservation of the ecological environment (Crotty, 2002;Jensen and Mina, 2019). From the provincial level, the industry changes in the jurisdiction can be manifested as the increase of green TFP in total.…”

Impact of Regional Green Development Strategy on Environmental Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

“…Such as green growth policies could result in a virtuous shift towards high value-added sectors [ 21 ]. The local governance (e.g., renewable technologies or services) had been proved very effective in reducing emissions of particulate matter [ 22 ]. Normally, economic growth is thought to be an acceptable way of strengthen the social and environment sustainability for all nations [ 23 ].…”