Industrial Pollution, Environmental Suffering and Policy Measures: An Index of Environmental Sensitivity Performance (Iesp)

Abstract

An index of environmental sensitivity performance (IESP) is constructed in order to measure and quantify the comparative environmental sensitivity of countries. The main emphasis of IESP is to obtain an overall measure of sensitiveness instead of focusing on various indicators designed for particular environmental issues. The sub-indices, however, can also be utilised for specific environmental concerns. IESP is built to analyse empirically certain economic relationships that appeared firstly in the emergence of environmental regulations in industrial nations and secondly, in the debate over recent international agreements. The main findings of the IESP seem to be consistent with the disputes emphasising the growing sensitivity of the developed nations towards the industrial pollution relative to the developing nations. With a very few exceptions, developed countries appear to be stringent in the pursuit of the industrial environmental regulations. This general trend, which is consistent with the theoretical expectations, contributes to the value of the IESP as a quantitative instrument. Furthermore, the wider range of the countries' index values can be considered as promising in terms of utilising IESP in quantitative applications.

Innovation and Environmental Stringency: The Case of Sulfur Dioxide Abatement

“…In the second model (model II) we assume that stringency differentials between countries are constant over time. This approach is based on recent work by Cagatay and Mihci (2003), who develop an "Index of Environmental Sensitivity Performance" (IESP). The IESP consists of several subindices, among which an index referring to acidification.…”

“…This dummy thus determines the marginal value of a strict environmental policy regime with respect to patent activity. The corresponding IESP levels in Cagatay and Mihci (2003) were categorized in different stringency regimes ranging from the extremes "strict" to "tolerant". More precisely, they distinguish six categories: strict, strict to moderate, moderate to strict, moderate, moderate to tolerant, and tolerant.…”

Municipal Waste Kuznets Curves: Evidence on Socio-Economic Drivers and Policy Effectiveness from the EU

“…The latter is assigned a stronger weight (0 for no policy, 1 only strategy, 2 policy). Prominent examples of overall environmental policy performance index setups for many countries based on a synthesis of diverse policy performances can be found inEliste and Fred- rikkson (1998) Cagatay and Mihci (2003;. provide an index of environmental sensitivity performance for 1990-1995, for acidification, climate change, water and even waste management.19 We can hypothesise that the backward effects of landfill policies and waste management actions on the MSW generated are not significant.…”

A Dynamic Spatial Panel of Subnational GHG Emissions: Environmental Effectiveness of Emissions Taxes in Spanish Regions

“…The reason is that these environmental taxes and regulations probably affect the same polluter agents or industries, and that the technological changes or innovations they encourage can even lead to the displacement of pollution to other sectors (such as the electricity industry) or other resources (such as water). To take these synergies into account, we included the variable ENVTAX, which captures the aggregate environmental taxes of the region, and ENVEXP, which captures the current expenditure companies have to incur as a consequence of the environmental policies, and which can potentially also influence emissions levels [1,7,50,51]. Their expected sign would therefore also be negative, although it is hard to assess the effectiveness of environmental policies due to their possible rebound effects: an increase in energy consumption could have been induced by a fall in the cost of using energy services as a result of, for example, greater energy efficiency caused by a regulation [9].…”