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We quantify the impact of the Wuhan Covid-19 lockdown on concentrations of four air pollutants using a two-step approach. First, we use machine learning to remove the confounding effects of weather conditions on pollution concentrations. Second, we use a new augmented synthetic control method (Ben-Michael et al. in The augmented synthetic control method. University of California Berkeley, Mimeo, 2019. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.04170.pdf) to estimate the impact of the lockdown on weather normalised pollution relative to a control group of cities that were not in lockdown. We find NO 2 concentrations fell by as much as 24 μ g/m 3 during the lockdown (a reduction of 63% from the pre-lockdown level), while PM10 concentrations fell by a similar amount but for a shorter period. The lockdown had no discernible impact on concentrations of SO 2 or CO. We calculate that the reduction of NO 2 concentrations could have prevented as many as 496 deaths in Wuhan city, 3368 deaths in Hubei province and 10,822 deaths in China as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for developed countries to take a lead in the global fight against climate change is generally acknowledged and was intrinsic to the 2015 Paris climate change agreement. An understanding of the way in which environmental policy in advanced nations has developed and which policies have had a significant impact on the reduction in the emissions of various pollutants may yield important policy prescriptions relevant to the current climate change negotiations. In this paper we consider how Japan's little-known environmental interest rate policy and voluntary pollution control agreements contributed to Japan's ecological modernization and how these policies compare with the more traditional regulatory approach. Our results show that Japan's use of an environmental interest rate policy was an effective policy as a complement to the more traditional regulatory approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of closer worldwide economic integration, the role that environmental regulations play in shaping a country's comparative advantage is greater than ever. This has led to fears that ‘dirty’ firms will relocate from developed to developing countries where environmental regulations may be less stringent – the so-called pollution haven hypothesis. To date, however, there is little support for the existence of pollution havens despite anecdotal evidence and the theoretical predictions. In this paper we employ a unique industry-level dataset for Japan and examine whether Japanese industries have relocated production to their ASEAN neighbors in response to the relative stringency of Japanese environmental regulations. Not only do we find no evidence for pollution-haven-consistent behavior but also some indication that the complex relationship between the characteristics of Japanese dirty industries and environmental regulations may actually have reduced Japanese outward FDI to the Philippines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to identify whether declining industrial pollution intensities in many European countries are a result of reductions in sectoral emissions intensities (i.e. the effects of regulations and technology) or changes to the product mix (e.g. the decline of heavy industries). This distinction is important since reductions in pollution that are a result of changes to the product mix may simply reflect a transfer of pollution from one country to another, rather than a net reduction. We attempt to resolve this issue by applying the divisia decomposition technique to a new dataset of industry-specific emissions intensities for three common air pollutants, for four European countries. Our results generally indicate the dominance of the sectoral intensity effect although, for the UK in particular evidence of an increasingly clean product mix is found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines and quantifies the complex linkages between industrial activity, environmental regulations and air pollution. Couched in terms of the demand for, and the supply of, environmental services we utilize a new dataset of UK industry specific emissions for a variety of pollutants between 1990 and 1998. Our analysis allows us to investigate the role played by different determinants of emissions intensity. We find pollution intensity to be a positive function of energy use and physical and human capital intensity. Conversely, we find pollution intensity to be a negative function of the size of the average firm in an industry, the productivity of an industry and the industry's expenditure on capital and research and development. Our results also indicate that regulations, both formal and informal, have been successful in reducing pollution intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]