Search

CNRS 3, HCERES B; International audience; Information communication technology (ICT) and environmental innovation (EI) are relevant waves of the ongoing technological revolution. We study the complementarity in innovation adoption to test the research hypothesis that the higher the diffusion and intensity of usage of ICT and EI, the higher a firm's productivity performance might be. However, it is not certain that the use of different innovations stemming from different innovation paths generates higher productivity. To test our hypothesis, we use original survey data concerning manufacturing firms in Northeast Italy including detailed information on both ICT and EI. Empirical evidence shows that there are still wide margins to improve the integration between EI and ICT in order to exploit their potential benefits on productivity. The awareness of specific synergies seems to mainly characterise the heavy polluting firms that are subject to more stringent environmental constraints, while some trade-offs tend to emerge for the remaining firms.

The paper aims to provide an original contribution to evaluating several kinds of relations between four areas of innovation activities – training, technology, organization, ICT (information and communication technologies) – and industrial relations and firm’s economic performance. Quantitative evidence for a SME‐based local production system is provided by exploiting two datasets: the first is derived from a direct survey carried out in 2005 collecting data on innovations, labour flexibility and industrial relations; the second is represented by a panel of official balance sheets data for the period 1998–2004. The analysis is divided in two consequential parts. We first examine the drivers of different innovation strategies and subsequently we exploit innovation indicators as potential drivers of firm’s productivity. The results show that training activities and organizational changes have strong links with many industrial relations indicators, thus emerging as industrial relations driven innovations. On...

In this paper we test an adapted EKC hypothesis to verify the relationship between ‘environmental efficiency’ (namely emissions per unit of value added) and labour productivity (value added per employee). We exploit NAMEA data on Italy for 29 sector branches and 6 categories of air emissions for the period 1991–2001. We employ data on capital stock and trade openness to test the robustness of our results. On the basis of the theoretical and empirical analyses focusing on innovation, firm performances and environmental externalities, we would expect a positive correlation between environmental efficiency and labour productivity — a negative correlation between the emissions intensity of value added and labour productivity — which departs from the conventional mainstream view. The hypothesis tested is a critical one within the longstanding debate on the potential trade-off or complementarity between environmental preservation and economic performance, which is strictly associated with the role of technological innovation. We find that for most air emission categories there is a positive relationship between labour productivity and environmental efficiency. Labour productivity dynamics, then, seem to be complementary to a decreasing emissions intensity in the production process. Taking a disaggregate sector perspective, we show that the macro-aggregate evidence is driven by sector dynamics in a non-homogenous way across pollutants. Services tend always to show a ‘complementary’ relationship, while industry seems to be associated with inverted U-shape dynamics for greenhouse gases and nitrogen oxides. This is in line with our expectations. In any case, EKC shapes appear to drive such productivity links towards complementarity. The extent to which this evidence derives from endogenous market forces, industrial and structural change, and policy effects is discussed by taking an evolutionary perspective to innovation and by referring to impure public goods arguments.

The article provides empirical evidence on the de-linking of waste generation from economic growth. The data used refer to the European countries. An investigation carried out into packaging and municipal waste indicators shows that any de-coupling which has eventually taken place has been of a relative nature. Estimated waste elasticities with respect to income highlight that a hypothetical turning point, that would eventually characterize a Kuznets curve for waste, is far from being reached. Europe thus appears to be lagging behind in the effort to invert the relationship between waste and income/consumption indicators. The lack of policy targets in reference to waste prevention at source, in addition to recovery/recycling goals, may be considered as a primary policy-related reason behind the absence of a stronger de-linking process for waste in Europe. The applied panel investigation, though informative since it refers to a homogenous regional area, reveals the need for further work, exploring de-linki...

Innovation is a key factor in firms achieving better environmental performance, to the extent that it helps to increase the materials/energy efficiency of production processes and reduces the emissions/effluents associated with outputs. The study has two main aims. First, by testing a set of hypotheses, to provide new evidence on the influence of a wide array of innovation drivers. Second, to examine the hypothesis of a complementary relationship regarding the adoption of different environmental innovations and a set of associated innovation drivers. The investigation shows that the more general structural characteristics of the firm appear to matter less than eco auditing, R&D and policy related costs. As far as adoption of different eco innovations is concerned, the analysis shows that firms that innovate tend to pursue different environmental innovations simultaneously. At the level of innovation drivers, it appears that the complementarity, though predominant across the various pairings of dr...

The idea behind this paper is that social capital (SC) is interpreted as a component of an investment, which implies entangled private and public benefits. Within a theoretical framework that considers SC as the public component of the impure public good R&D we show that the ‘civic culture’ of the district in which a firm is located is not a sufficient incentive for the firm to increase its investment in SC, because SC/networking dynamics might positively and complementarily evolve only if the opportunity cost of investing in innovation is sufficiently low. Consequently, we focus our attention on a specialised biomedical industrial district characterised by a strong pattern of innovative activity. We observe that R&D and networking/social capital arise as complementary driving forces of innovation outputs. When the empirical evidence confirms that this complementarity plays a key role, policy efforts should be targeted toward both market and non-market characteristics, rather than solely to the production of local public goods or innovation inputs as independent elements of firm performance. This is very important in terms of policy effectiveness. In fact, we argue that SC/networking dynamics might positively evolve only if the private opportunity cost of investing in R&D innovation is sufficiently low. Nevertheless, this exogenous economic incentive works as long as complementarity, as defined here, holds.

The paper presents a conceptual review over the main aspects concerning the role of human capital investments and training activities within production processes, followed by empirical evidence on two local economic systems in Northern Italy, based on recent survey data. Theoretical and empirical considerations are brought together in order to provide new insights on the role of training and the factors associated to training activities at firm level. The potential driving factors of training here analysed compounds structural characteristics, labour demand dynamics, human resource management practices, workforce features, and firm performances. We observe that training activities emerge positively associated with high-performance practices, innovative labour demand features, workforce skill level, firm size, and are affected by labour flexibility in various directions. Empirical evidence confirms most previous results but also adds further important insights. The analysis suggests that a widening gap, between few innovatively evolving and many stagnant firms, could characterise the future dynamics of the Region. The high relevance of structural variables, labour demand factors and HRM/innovation practices shows that regional industrial policies and labour policies should be jointly implemented for increasing potential firm productivity. This is a key concern for the current debate on local systems economic development in the European and Italian environment.

The article studies the driving forces of firm training using a survey-based dataset of manufacturing firms in the Emilia-Romagna region, Northern Italy. The data are derived from the responses to a structured questionnaire administered in 2002 to the management of a representative sample of firms with more than 50 employees in the highly industrialised province of Reggio Emilia. Firms’ training choices are analysed using a theoretical/conceptual framework based on the notion of complementarity among productive factors. Training is provided as long as it favours the establishment of complementary relationships among the skills it develops and other inputs. The main factors associated with training include structural characteristics, HRM practices, workforce features, labour management and performance of the firm. Training activities emerge as being positively associated with organisational practices that affect the whole firm: workforce skill level, firm size, firm productivity and labour flexibility. The role of HRM practices in driving training is brought into question. These are key issues for the current debate on the development of local systems in the European and Italian context. The high and joint relevance of structural variables and labour demand-related factors shows that regional industrial policies must support labour policies within an integrated policy effort aimed at increasing potential firm productivity.

The paper investigates the driving factors of firm training using a survey-based dataset concerning manufacturing firms in the Emilia Romagna Region, located in Northern Italy. Data derive from a structured questionnaire administered in 2002 to the management of a representative sample of firms with more than 50 employees in a highly industrialised local production system. The applied analysis explores the linkages between firm training activities and its driving forces. The main potential factors associated to training here considered compounds firm structural characteristics, human resource management practices, workforce features, labour management, and firm’s performances. We observe that training activities emerge positively associated with high-performance practices, workforce skill level, firm size, firm productivity, and labour flexibility. The analysis suggests that a widening gap, between innovatively evolving and stagnant firms, could characterise the future dynamics of industrialised local areas. This is a key concern for the current debate on local systems development in the European and Italian environment, mainly based on small and medium size firms. The high and joint relevance of both structural variables, labour demand-related factors and HRM/innovation practices shows that regional industrial policies must support labour policies within an integrated policy effort aimed at increasing potential firm productivity.

The achievement of positive Environmental Performance (EP) at national level could strongly depend on differences in regional features, namely productive specialization, regulation stringency and innovation capabilities of both public institutions and the private business sector. We present empirical evidence for a newly released NAMEA available for the 20 Italian regions in order to demonstrate the role played by sector innovation, regional spillovers and environmental policies. The Italian North–south divide regarding industrial development and productive specialization patterns seems to affect regional EP. Nonetheless, such a pattern presents some interesting differences, revealing a more heterogeneous distribution of emissions which may reflect the role of other driving forces. In particular, agglomerative effects seem to play a major role and the EP of neighboring regions influences the regional internal EP. This means that together with the spatial concentration of specific sectors into restricted areas, there is also some convergence in the adoption of cleaner or dirtier production process techniques. Finally, interregional technological spillovers are more important than sector internal innovation for improving EP, revealing that accounting for spatial features and linking ecological economics to regional economics are crucial in understanding the key drivers of EP.

This paper provides new empirical evidence on regional–national disparities in environmental efficiency, based on analyses of NAMEA data referring to Italy and the Lazio region, where Rome is the main city. Shift-share analyses provide evidence on the drivers of environmental efficiency and on sector specificity. Our evidence shows that although the region around Rome has achieved higher environmental performance compared to Italy mainly thank to its being less industry based, some critical points in the energy sector and in some services should be taken into account in shaping the future development of the region. In addition, the use of regional NAMEA for econometric investigations of emission efficiency drivers at national level shows that though north south disparities favour northern and richer regions, in accordance with development oriented dynamics, environmental hot spots driven by specialisation and efficiency related issues also appear in some northern industrial regions. Further, the role of public ad private R&D is of main relevance in enhancing emission on economic value ratios. Environmental, industrial and sector-oriented policy making may derive valuable information from the evidence provided by our study, that highlights how analytical exploitation of NAMEA offers rich array of insights for regional policy making.

It is the purpose of this paper to contribute filling this gap. In particular, by providing some evidence on the impact that outsourcing has on the labour productivity of firms “embedded” in a LPS characterized by idiosyncratic techno-economic and organizational features. In so doing, the paper aims at testing whether this local embeddedness might make the productivity impact of outsourcing dependent on factors, which are not usually considered in the analysis of big-companies, such as the specialization pattern of the LPS, its labour division and organization, and its innovative profile. More precisely, a diachronic cross-section econometric model of the productivity impact of outsourcing is applied to a sample of firms based in a LPS of the Italian region of Emilia Romagna (Reggio Emilia province), for which survey-based outsourcing and balance-sheet data have been collected in the period 1998-2005. Its results are quite interesting: the main conclusions drawn by the theoretical and empirical literature in a big-company context end up with being mitigated, if not even reversed, in a LPS environment, suggesting new and original strategic implications. The paper is organized as follows. Section 13.2 outlines the issue and briefly presents the “ambiguous” link between outsourcing and firm performance (productivity, in particular) which emerges from the literature. Section 13.3 briefly describes the dataset and presents the econometric model. Section 13.4 comments the main empirical results. Some final remarks (Section 13.5) close the paper.

This paper develops empirical analyses using the NAMEA (National Accounting Matrix including Environmental Accounts) with reference to the Lazio region, Italy, where Rome is located. The data in our analysis are for 2000, the only year that both regional and national level data are available (national level data are available for the period 1990–2003). By comparing regional and national environmental sector intensities, we aim to demonstrate the utility of NAMEA and shift share analyses for environmental and industrial policy making. In referring to a regional framework, the analysis is very significant since it allows the investigation to focus on structural and idiosyncratic features compared with national averages, providing food for thought for regional development policy making, which is the key stone of economic development. It enables economic policies to be differentiated by regions, on the basis of the observed heterogeneity in economic-environmental relationships.

This article provides empirical evidence on delinking and Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) for municipal waste generation in Italy. A disaggregated panel data-set on Italian Provinces is exploited. The empirical analysis of different specifications shows a first evidence in favour of an EKC relationship with regard to waste generation. Nevertheless, the turning point (TP) is at very high levels of added value per capita (around 23 000-26 000€), which concern a very limited number of wealthy Northern Italian provinces. Finally, the test on some waste management instruments proxies, leads to the conclusion that they are not yet impacting waste generation. To lower the TPs and to avoid an increasing gap between geographical areas, market based and more effective policy instruments should be implemented. In particular, the weight of waste policies should be rebalanced towards waste prevention targets according to the European waste hierarchy.

This paper provides new empirical evidence on regional - national disparities in environmental efficiency, based on case studies of Italy and the Lazio region, which includes the city of Rome. Shift-share analyses provide evidence on the drivers of environmental efficiency and on sector specificity. This confirms the usefulness of this method for studying the environmental economics realm, in order to investigate structural and efficiency factors at the level of within country environmental efficiency performance, even in light of the different shares of services. Our evidence shows that although the Rome region has achieved higher environmental performance compared to Italy mainly thanks to its being less industry based, some critical points in the energy sector and in some services should be taken into account in shaping the future development of the region. Environmental, industrial and sector-oriented policy making may also derive valuable information from the evidence provided by our study.

This article provides a new empirical evidence on delinking and Environmental Kuznets Curves (EKC) for Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in Italy. Two panel datasets ? sector disaggregated National Accounts Matrix including Environmental Accounts emissions (1990?2001) and geographically disaggregated emissions at provincial level (1990?2000) ? are analysed. We find mixed evidence supporting the EKC hypothesis. EKC evidence is present for GHGs when focusing on production activities, while the picture changes, in particular for CO2, when analysing the economy as a whole, including private activities. As expected, aggregate trends hide heterogeneous sectoral dynamics to a large extent. From a policy perspective, the investigation highlights that the reduction in GHG emissions in Italy in recent years has been driven largely by production activities, especially industry, which may have been responding to or anticipating environmental regulation. Nevertheless, the absence of any real decoupling in the economy as a whole is probably linked to inefficiencies in the household sector, especially transport, where not even a relative delinking has occurred, which seems to point to the need for incremental efforts towards higher efficiency and stronger regulation.

This paper provides new empirical evidence on delinking and Environmental Kuznets Curves (EKC) for greenhouse gases and other air pollutant emissions in Italy. A panel dataset based on the Italian NAMEA (National Accounts Matrix including Environmental Accounts) for 1990-2001 is analysed. The highly disaggregated dataset (29 production branches, 12 years and nine air emissions) provides a large heterogeneity and can help to overcome the shortcomings of the usual approach to EKC based on cross-country data. Both value added and capital stock per employee are used as alternative drivers for analysing sectoral NAMEA emissions. Trade openness at the same sectoral level is also introduced among the covariates. We find mixed evidence supporting the EKC hypothesis. The analysis of NAMEA-based data shows that some of the pollutants such as two greenhouse gases (CO2 and CH4) and CO, produce inverted U-shaped curves with coherent within-range turning points. Other pollutants (SOX, NOX, PM10) show a monotonic or even N-shaped relationship. Macro sectoral disaggregated analysis highlights that the aggregated outcome should hide some heterogeneity across different groups of production branches (industry, manufacturing only and services). Services tend to present an inverted N-shape in most cases. Manufacturing industry shows a mix of inverted U and N-shapes, depending on the emission considered. The same is true for industry (all industries, not only manufacturing): although a turning point has been experienced, N-shapes may lead to increased emissions with respect to very high levels of the economic driver. In general, EKC evidence is more pronounced for greenhouse gases. The results suggest that analysis at macro sector (whole industry, manufacturing only and services) can be the most promising approach to future research on EKC.

This paper provides new empirical evidence on delinking trends concerning emission-related indicators in Italy. We discuss methodological issues regarding the analysis of delinking and examine the related Environmental Kuznets Curves (EKC) literature to explore and assess the most value added research lines after more than a decade of intensive research in the field. The main contribution of the paper is in providing EKC evidence exploiting environmental-economic merged panel datasets at a decentralized level exploiting long time series and rich cross section heterogeneity at both sectoral and provincial level. This crucially augments the unsatisfactory outcomes deriving from cross country analyses, which are less informative for policy purposes since they provide averages for environmental-economic relationships. Two panel datasets: 1990-2000 emissions at province level; and sectoral disaggregated NAMEA emissions sources for 1990-2001 are analyzed. We find mixed evidence supporting the EKC hypothesis. Some of the pollutants in the NAMEA data, such as CO2, CH4 and CO, produce inverted-U shaped curves with coherent within range turning points. Other emission trends for the period under consideration show monotonic or even N shaped (SOX, NOX, PM10) relationship. Other emissions show relatively less robust results, with mixed evidence arising from different specifications. This partially confirms some of the criticisms directed to EKC empirical investigations. However, our analysis shows that probably there is no single EKC dynamic, but rather many EKC dynamics, differing depending on (i) period of observation; (ii) country/area; (iii) emissions/environmental pressures; (iv) sectors. Sectoral disaggregated analysis highlights that an aggregated outcome should hide some heterogeneity across different sectors. Services tend to present an inverted-N shape in most cases. Manufacturing industry shows a mix of EKC inverted- U and N shapes, depending on the emission considered. The same is true for industry (all industries, not only manufacturing): though a turning point has been experienced, N shapes may lead to increased emissions with respect to very high levels of the income driver. The analysis of provincial data shows that inverted-U shaped curves are present for some of the emissions in the SINAnet- APAT database, such as CH4, NMVOC, CO and PM10, with coherent within range turning points. Other emission trends show a monotonic relationship (CO2 and N2O), or in some cases an inverted-N shaped relationship (SOX and NOX). This kind of analysis at macro sector and/or specific sector level appear to be the most promising and robust field of future research for the assessment of EKC dynamics. National studies grounded in geographical heterogeneity, rather than regional/international analysis, and focused on sectoral trends, are more informative for policy making. The implementation of such investigations needs larger datasets than are currently available. We thus point to the need for increasing and continual effort on constructing integrated environmental/economic statistical accounts.

Technological innovation is a key factor for achieving a better environmental performance of firms and the economy as a whole, to the extent that it helps to increase the material/energy efficiency of production processes and to reduce emission/effluents associated to outputs. Environmental innovation may spur from exogenous driving forces, like policy intervention, and/or from endogenous factors associated to firm market and management strategies. Despite the crucial importance of research in this field, empirical evidence at firm microeconomic level, for various reasons, is still scarce. Microeconomic-based analysis is needed in order to assess what forces are lying behind environmental innovation at the level of the firm, where innovative practices emerge and are adopted. The paper exploits information deriving from two surveys conducted on a sample of manufacturing firms in Emilia Romagna region -Northern Italy- in 2002 and 2004, located in a district-intense local production system. New evidence is provided by testing a set of hypotheses, concerning the influence of: (i) firm structural variables; (ii) environmental R&D; (iii) environmental policy pressure and regulatory costs; (iv) past firm performances; (v) networking activities, (vi) other non-environmental techno-organizational innovations and (vii) quality/nature of industrial relations. We estimate input and output-based environmental innovation reduced form specifications in order to test the set of hypotheses. The applied investigation shows that environmental innovation drivers, both at input and output level, are found within exogenous factors and endogenous elements concerning the firm and its activities/strategies within and outside its natural boundaries. In the present case study, the usual structural characteristics of the firm and performances appear to matter less than R&D, induced costs, networking, organisational flatness and innovative oriented industrial relations. Environmental Policies and environmental voluntary auditing schemes exert some relevant direct and indirect effects on innovation, although evidence is mixed and further research is particularly needed. Although this new empirical evidence is focussing on a specific industrial territory, we provide food for discussion on firm environmental innovation strategies, and research suggestions for further empirical work.

The paper develops a conceptual framework aimed at analysing the profitability to finance general training, grounding on the notion of complementarity among productive factors. First, we show that a simple application of theoretical analysis based on the lattice theory and the notion of supermodularity can provide a suitable framework to study complementarity relationships characterizing productive factors. Secondly, we discuss empirical evidence on complementarity between general and specific training with respect to firm productivity, exploiting a detailed and specifically constructed survey based dataset. Complementarity between training forms is thus tested in a discrete framework. We show that complementarity holds for most specifications, though the outcome might be dependant on other firm-related features and strategies. The multivariate analysis also shows, on the same model framework, that R&D and training expenditures are emerging as main explanatory drivers for productivity. Our results on training complementarity and productivity drivers indicates that complementarity related to training forms matters, but also that the mere training adoption is probably not sufficient: the level of training provided is positively correlated with firm productivity.

We present empirical evidence on the determinants of residential water demand for one Italian region, Emilia-Romagna, by using municipal panel data. The estimated water demand price elasticity is negative, showing values between -0.99 and -1.33, never significantly different from one, considering different specifications without and with additional socio-economic factors. Income results associated to a positive elasticity, though lower than one. The role of other socio-economic territory-specific determinants is less relevant, with the exception of altitude. The relative high value of price elasticity is deemed consistent with the higher level of Regional water prices compared to the national average. The applied analysis is an important starting point for the Italian environment, which lacks reliable estimates on elasticities concerning microeconomic water demand studies. The estimation of price elasticity and the investigation on the determinants of water demand are necessary steps for both private and private-public management of water resources within the new framework originating from the implementation of the 96/1994 National water bill.

The paper provides preliminary empirical evidence on delinking trends concerning waste indicators in Europe. First, methodological issues regarding the analysis of delinking are discussed, and the related Environmental Kuznets Curves literature is critically examined. Then, European-level data on municipal and packaging waste are investigated by panel data approaches, examining different EKC specifications. For packaging and municipal waste flows, decoupling seems to occur, at best, only on a relative basis. No significant evidence in favour of an inverted U-shape Kuznets curve is found. Europe as a whole seems to be still lagging behind in reaching the critical turning point of the relationship between waste and household consumption. Our results suggest some possible advantages and limitations of panel data for a set of relatively homogenous countries as well as the possible added value of further delinking analyses for specific waste materials and/or single countries. Although preliminary, dep...

We present empirical evidence on the determinants of residential water demand for one Italian region, Emilia-Romagna, by using municipal panel data. The estimated water demand price elasticity is negative, showing values between -0.99 and -1.33, never significantly different from one, considering different specifications without and with additional socio-economic factors. Income results associated to a positive elasticity, though lower than one. The role of other socio-economic territory-specific determinants is less relevant, with the exception of altitude. The relative high value of price elasticity is deemed consistent with the higher level of Regional water prices compared to the national average. The applied analysis is an important starting point for the Italian environment, which lacks reliable estimates on elasticities concerning micro-economic water demand studies. The estimation of price elasticity and the investigation on the determinants of water demand are necessary steps for both private and private-public management of water resources within the new framework originating from the implementation of the 96/1994 National water bill.