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This paper aims at analysing the role of the environment in innovative strategies based on firm economic performance indicators such as employment, turnover, and labour productivity growth. We exploit a unique dataset of 773 Italian service firms with 20 or more employees comprising 1993-1995 CIS II data on firm innovation strategic motivations and 1995-1998 data on employment, turnover, and labour productivity from the System of the Enterprise Account (SEA). We specify a Gibrat-like empirical model in which the covariates include firm strategies (innovation and environmental), and a set of other explanatory variables and controls. Our econometric findings show a negative link between environmental motivations and growth in employment and turnover and a consequent not significant effect on labour productivity growth. The effect on employment is partly in line with past evidence and may derive from efficiency improvements (dematerialization processes) which also impact on efficiency by reducing workforce number. It is plausible that the net effect derives from the absence of low skilled employment and a creation of high skilled jobs, as a consequence of increased environmental awareness. The effect on turnover shows a negative impact from environmental innovation strategy, implying either a short-medium effect, possibly balanced in the long run by net benefits in terms of higher added value, or a real negative impact, which may be contingent on the observed period, when environmental strategies where not at the heart of strategic management policies. However, productivity-related effects (the core of performance indicators) are not significant. Mainstream hypotheses related to eventual negative impacts are thus not confirmed, although Porter-like effects and virtuous circles between environmentally strategies and performance do not seem to be present.

The paper aims at investigating how far transaction costs economics (TCE) concurs in the explanation of outsourcing decisions in firms characterized by “thick’ industrial relations, that is where unions and employees are involved in, and are sometimes able to affect, the relative managerial decisions through participatory formal and informal mechanisms. What is more, the paper aims at investigating whether the concurrence of TCE and industrial relationships has different outsourcing implications for firms which are also involved in delocalization strategies. An empirical model, translating a set of theoretical correlations between an original outsourcing extent variable, on the one hand, and a number of proxies related to TCE, industrial relations and delocalization, on the other hand, is applied to a representative sample of manufacturing firms for the local production system of Reggio Emilia (RE) (in Northern Italy). Overall, the empirical application shows that the role of TCE in accounting for outsourcing in the LPS of RE is quite blurred, if not even contradicted, while the role of industrial relations emerges instead quite straightforwardly. Finally, RE firms generally use outsourcing and international delocalization in a complementary way, but the correlation between outsourcing and delocalization turns out to be dependent on the kind of activity and of the nature of the delocalization channel.

We study the eventual structural differences of climate change leading ‘actors’ such as Northern EU countries, and ‘lagging actors’ - southern EU countries and the ‘Umbrella group’ - with regard to long run (1960-2001) carbon-income relationships. Parametric and semi parametric panel models show that the groups of countries that were in the Kyoto arena less in favour of stringent climate policy, have yet to experience a turning point, though they at least show relative delinking in their monotonic carbon-income relationship. Northern EU instead robustly shows bell shapes across models, which seem to depend on time related (policy) events. Time related effects are more relevant than income effects in explaining the occurrence of robust Kuznets curves. The reaction of northern EU to exogenous policy events such as the 1992 climate change convention that gave earth to the Kyoto era, and even the second oil shock that preceded it in the 80’s are among the causes of the observed structural differences.

The achievement of positive environmental performance at national level could strongly depend on differences in local capabilities of both institutions and the private business sector. Environmental regulation alone is a weak instrument if the institutional and business environment cannot transform regulation strengths into opportunities. In this paper, we use the new environmental accounting matrix for polluting emissions now available for the 20 Italian Regions that covers 24 sectors and combines a shift-share approach with spatial econometric modelling. We provide evidence of the role played by internal innovation, innovation spillovers and regional policies in shaping the geographical distribution of environmental performance achievements.

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.

We empirically test delinking of waste dynamics with regard to economic growth and the effectiveness of environmental and specific waste-related policies, by exploiting a newly constructed, integrated waste-economic-policy dataset based on official data for the EU15 for 1995-2007. We find that absolute delinking for waste generation is far from being achieved in the EU despite fairly stringent and longstanding policy commitment that goes back to the mid 1990s, but which however is biased towards waste management and waste disposal rather than waste prevention. Policy as well as country structural factors seem to impact instead on landfill diversion. Nevertheless, country heterogeneity matters: SURE based analyses show that EU average figures often hide high variance. Their results provide food for thought for a future most comprehensive EU waste policy strategy, which is now aimed mainly at landfill diversion, within a framework strongly oriented to allowing countries to decide about the implementation of EU directives.

The strong adverse selection that immigrants face in hosting labour markets may induce them to adopt some behaviours or signals to modify employers’ beliefs. Relevant mechanisms for reaching this purpose are personal reputation; exploiting ethnic networks deeply rooted in the hosting country; and high educational levels used as an indirect signal of productivity. On this last point, the immigrant status needs a stronger signal compared to that necessary for a native worker, and this may lead the immigrant to accept job qualifications which are lower than those achievable through the embodied educational level. The aim of the paper is to investigate whether the above mentioned mechanisms are adopted by immigrants in Italy, a crucial country for EU immigration flows, and if they are useful in increasing immigrants’ likelihood of employment. The empirical analysis has been conducted using the dataset from a national Labour Force Survey which provides information on thousands of documented immigrants. We estimate a logit model for immigrants’ likelihood of being employed, focusing on the above mentioned mechanisms: reputation, ethnic networks and educational level. Moreover we concentrate on the interaction effects of the mechanisms and investigate whether one of them wins on the others. Results show that each of the three mechanisms is statistically and economically significant and exerts positive influence: all factors contribute to increase the immigrant's probability of being employed. Anyway, a high level of education increases the probability of being employed more than the belonging to ethnic networks deeply rooted in Italy. The specific embodied capital of workers matter relatively more. This is relevant for labour public policies in this specific realm since the human capital lever is a possible direct target in various public policies and private human capital investments.

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 provides analyses of municipal waste generation and landfill diversion dynamics based on an 8-year panel dataset for Italy covering 103 provinces. Although absolute declining for waste generation is a long way off, there are some first signals of increasing relative delinking and robust average landfill diversion. Spatial effects seem to be negligible, probably due to the strong decentralisation of waste management and policies: local, economic, policy and structural factors contribute to explaining the waste dynamics. Though North-South waste performances are showing some signals of convergence, greater efforts towards convergence of waste performances in a decentralised policy scenario are needed.

The achievement of positive environmental performance at national level could strongly depend on differences in local capabilities of both institutions and the private business sector. Environmental regulation alone is a weak instrument if the institutional and business environment cannot transform regulation strengths into opportunities. In this paper, we use the new environmental accounting matrix for polluting emissions now available for the 20 Italian Regions that covers 24 sectors and combines a shift-share approach with spatial econometric modelling. We provide evidence of the role played by internal innovation, innovation spillovers and regional policies in shaping the geographical distribution of environmental performance achievements.

This paper aims to explore how the competitiveness of the EU economy, here captured by export dynamics over the medium run (1996-2007), has been affected by environmental regulation both on the public and private sector side. The strong and weak versions of the Porter hypothesis are tested by specifying the export dynamics of five aggregated manufacturing sectors classified by their technological or environmental content using a dynamic panel data estimator applied to a theoretically-based gravity model. When testing the strong version on export performances of manufacturing sectors, the overall effect of environmental policies does not conflict with export competitiveness. When testing the weak version using export flows of environmental goods, environmental policies, as well as innovation activities, all foster competitive advantages of green exports. Public policies and private innovation patterns trigger higher efficiency in the production process, thus turning the perception of environmental protection actions as a production cost into a net benefit. These results constitute useful advice for policy makers involved in the new wave of environmental tax reforms and green recovery packages currently debated at European Union level.

International audience; This paper investigates the environmental Kuznets curves (EKC) for CO2 emissions in a panel of 109 countries during the period 1959-2001. The length of the series makes the application of a heterogeneous estimator suitable from an econometric point of view. The results, based on the hierarchical Bayes estimator, show that different EKC dynamics are associated with the different sub-samples of countries considered. On average, more industrialized countries show evidence of EKC in quadratic specifications, which nevertheless are probably evolving into an N shape based on their cubic specification. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the EU, and not the Umbrella group led by US, has been driving currently observed EKC-like shapes. The latter is associated to monotonic income-CO2 dynamics. The EU shows a clear EKC shape. Evidence for less developed countries consistently shows that CO2 emissions rise positively with income, though there are some signs of an EKC. Analyses of future performance, nevertheless, favor quadratic specifications, thus supporting EKC evidence for wealthier countries and non-EKC shapes for industrializing regions.

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.

The strong adverse selection that immigrants face in hosting labour markets may induce them to adopt some behaviours or signals to modify employers’ beliefs. Relevant mechanisms for reaching this purpose are personal reputation; exploiting ethnic networks deeply-rooted in the hosting country; and high educational levels used as an indirect signal of productivity. On this last point, the immigrant status needs a stronger signal compared to that necessary for a local worker, and this may lead the immigrant to accept job qualifications which are lower than those achievable through the embodied educational level. This could explain the over education problem that characterizes many countries, Italy included. The aim of the paper is to investigate whether the above mentioned mechanisms are adopted by immigrants in Italy, a crucial country for EU immigration flows, and if they are useful in increasing immigrants’ likelihood of employment. The empirical analysis has been conducted using the dataset from a national Labour Force Survey which provides information on 6,860 documented immigrants. We estimate a logit model for immigrants’ likelihood of being employed, focusing on the above mentioned mechanisms: reputation, ethnic networks and educational level. Moreover we concentrate on the interaction effects of the mechanisms and investigate whether one of them wins on the others. Results show that each of the three mechanisms is statistically and economically significant and exerts positive influence: all factors contribute to increasing the immigrant’s probability of being employed. Anyway, a high level of education increases the probability of being employed more than the belonging to ethnic networks deeply-rooted in Italy. The specific embodied capital of workers matter relatively more. This is relevant for labour public policies in this specific realm since the human capital lever is a possible direct target of various public policies and private human capital investments.

This paper provides new empirical evidence on Environmental Kuznets Curves (EKC) for greenhouse gases (GHGs) and air pollutants at sector level. A panel dataset based on the Italian NAMEA over 1990-2005 is analysed, focusing on both emission efficiency (EKC model) and total emissions (IPAT model). Results show that looking at sector evidence, both decoupling and also eventually re-coupling trends could emerge along the path of economic development. CH4 is moderately decreasing in recent years, but being a minor gas compared to CO2, the overall performance on GHGs is not compliant with Kyoto targets, which do not appear to have generated a structural break in the dynamics at least for GHGs. SOx and NOx show decreasing patterns, though the shape is affected by some outlier sectors with regard to joint emission-productivity dynamics, and for SOx exogenous innovation and policy related factors may be the main driving force behind observed reductions. Services tend to present stronger delinking patterns across emissions. Trade expansion validates the pollution haven in some cases, but also show negative signs when only EU15 trade is considered: this may due to technology spillovers and a positive ‘race to the top’ rather than the bottom among EU15 trade partners (Italy and Germany as the main exporters and trade partner in the EU). Finally, general R&D expenditure show weak correlation with emissions efficiency. EKC and IPAT derived models provide similar conclusions overall; the emission-labour elasticity estimated in the latter is generally different from 1, suggesting that in most cases, and for both services and industry, a scenario characterised by emissions saving technological dynamics. Further research should be directed towards deeper investigation of trade relationship at sector level, increased research into and efforts to produce specific sectoral data on ‘environmental innovations’, and to verifying the value of heterogeneous panel models capturing sector heterogeneity.

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.

The paper investigates the drivers of the outsourcing decisions of firms located in a specific local production system. Different kinds of drivers are considered drawing on different strands of the literature, considering the firm from an organizational point of view, and as a production, industrial and innovation unit of analysis. Theoretical correlations between outsourcing decisions and variables are formulated and tested with respect to a representative cross-section sample of the firms in Reggio Emilia, a local production system in Emilia Romagna. The main result of the paper is that, in the local context investigated, transaction costs do not seem to be a significant driver of outsourcing. The decision to externalize is rather driven by other arguments, strongly based on the resource–competence approach, factors such as the need for tapping into the providers to promote technological innovation. On the other hand, these drivers are contrasted by the industrial relations of the firms, as workers and workers’ representatives significa

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.

The paper investigates empirically the impact that outsourcing strategies have on the labour productivity of firms embedded in a local production system characterized by idiosyncratic techno-economic and organizational features. A diachronic cross-section econometric model of the productivity impact of outsourcing is applied to a sample of firms based in the local production system (LPS) of Reggio Emilia (RE) (in Emilia Romagna, Italy). The application confirms some of the results the empirical literature reports for other no or less context specific empirical applications, in particular their dependency on the kind of outsourced activities, the internationalization of the outsourcing firm and time horizon of the productivity effects. On the other hand, when the actual extent at which the different kinds of activities are outsourced is retained, important exceptions to these results are obtained: the positive impact of the externalization of manufacturing activities is the most relevant and the most consistent with the district nature of the investigated LPS.

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.

Waste generation and waste disposal are issues that are becoming increasingly prominent in the environmental arena both from a policy perspective and in the context of delinking analysis. Waste generation is still increasing proportionally with income, and economic and environmental costs associated to landfilling are also increasing. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of waste generation, incineration, recycling and landfill dynamics based on panel data for the EU25, to assess the effects of different drivers (economic, structural, policy) and the eventual differences between western and eastern EU countries. We show that for waste generation there is still no Waste Kuznets Curve (WKC) trend, although elasticity to income drivers appear lower than in the past. Landfill and other policy effects do not seem to provide backward incentives for waste prevention. Regarding landfill and incineration, the two trends, as expected, are respectively decreasing and increasing, with policy providing a strong driver. It demonstrates the effectiveness of policy even in this early stage of policy implementation. This is essential for an ex post evaluation of existing landfill and incineration directives. Eastern countries appear to perform generally quite well, thus benefiting from their EU membership and related policies in terms of environmental performances. We may conclude that although absolute delinking is far from being achieved for waste generation, there are first positive signals in favour of an increasing relative delinking for waste generation and average robust landfill diversion, and various evidence of a significant role of the EU waste policies implemented in the late 1990s and early 2000s on landfill diversion. Waste prevention is nevertheless the next necessary target of waste regulatory efforts.

This paper investigates the empirical link between emission intensity and economic growth, using a very large data set of 61,219 Italian manufacturing firms over the period 2000-2004. As a measure of lagged environmental performance (efficiency) at firm level we exploit NAMEA sector for CO2, NOx, SOx data over 1990-1999. The paper tests the extent to which (past) environmental efficiency/intensity, which is driven by structural features and firm strategic actions, including responses to policies, influences firms growth. Our results show, first, a typical trade off generally appearing for the three core environmental emissions we analyse: lower environmentally efficiency in the recent past allows higher degrees of freedom to firms and relax the constraints for growth, at least in this short/medium term scenario. Nevertheless, the size of the estimated coefficients is not large. Trade off are significant for two emission indicators out of two, but quite negligible in terms of impacts, besides the case of CO2. For example, growth is reduced by far less than 0.1% in association to a 1% increase of environmental efficiency. Environmental efficiency does not seem a primary cost factor and constraint to growth if compared to other factors affecting firm targets and firm competitiveness. In addition, non-linearity seems to characterise the economic growth-environmental performance relationship. Signals of inverted U shape appears: this may be a signal that both firm strategies and recent policy efforts are affecting the dynamic relationship between environmental efficiency and economic productivity, turning it from an usual trade off to a possible joint complementary/co-dynamics, where bad environmental performances hamper firm growth and investments in greener technologies may be associated to positive economic performances of firms and sectors.

This paper analyses the process of delinking for landfilling trends embedding the dynamics in a frame where economic, geographical and policy variables enter the arena We aim at investigating in depth what main drivers may be responsible for such a phenomenon, and whether differences may be observed focusing the lens on a decentralised provincial based setting. We exploit a rich panel dataset stemming from Official sources (APAT, Italian environmental agency) merged with other provincial and regional based information, covering all the 103 Italian provinces over 1999-2005. The case study on Italy is worth being considered given that Italy is a main country in the EU. Thus it offers important pieces on information on the evaluation of policies. Evidence shows that the observed decoupling between economic growth and landfilling is driven by a mix of structural factors, as population density and other waste management opportunity: local opportunity costs and landfill externalities matter in shaping waste policies and local commitment to landfill diversion. But not only structural factors are relevant. If on the one hand landfill taxation is a significant driver of the phenomenon, even at the more coherent regional level, where the tax is implemented, waste management instruments, when we exploit the provincial dataset, are associated to high significant negative effect on landfilled waste. A good performance on managing waste according to economic rationales helps reducing the amount that is landfilled. In association to the features of the tariff system, we also underline the key role played by the share of separated collection. Both the evolution of collection and tariff system are joint factors that may drive a wedge between the comparative waste performances of northern and southern regions. We finally note that lock in effects linked to the intensity of incinerator sites in the area are relevant for landfilling: past investments in incineration lock in the region in this technological path, which may be associated to less opportunity cost and lower external effects. Summing up, landfill diversion is stronger where the economic cost deriving from high population density, a structural factor, are higher, and waste management collection systems and economic instruments are associated with higher performances.

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.

The paper investigates empirically the impact that outsourcing strategies have on the labour productivity of firms embedded in a local production system characterized by idiosyncratic techno-economic and organizational features. A diachronic cross-section econometric model of the productivity impact of outsourcing is applied to a sample of firms based in the local production system (LPS) of Reggio Emilia (RE) (in Emilia Romagna, Italy). The application confirms some of the results the empirical literature reports for other no or less context specific empirical applications, in particular their dependency on the kind of outsourced activities, the internationalization of the outsourcing firm and time horizon of the productivity effects. On the other hand, when the actual extent at which the different kinds of activities are outsourced is retained, important exceptions to these results are obtained: the positive impact of the externalization of manufacturing activities is the most relevant and the most consistent with the district nature of the investigated LPS.

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.

Waste generation and waste disposal are issues that are becoming increasingly prominent in the environmental arena both from a policy perspective and in the context of delinking analysis. Waste generation is still increasing proportionally with income, and economic and environmental costs associated to landfilling are also increasing. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of waste generation, incineration, recycling and landfill dynamics based on panel data for the EU25, to assess the effects of different drivers (economic, structural, policy) and the eventual differences between western and eastern EU countries. We show that for waste generation there is still no Waste Kuznets Curve (WKC) trend, although elasticity to income drivers appear lower than in the past. Landfill and other policy effects do not seem to provide backward incentives for waste prevention. Regarding landfill and incineration, the two trends, as expected, are respectively decreasing and increasing, with policy providing a strong driver. It demonstrates the effectiveness of policy even in this early stage of policy implementation. This is essential for an ex post evaluation of existing landfill and incineration directives. Eastern countries appear to perform generally quite well, thus benefiting from their EU membership and related policies in terms of environmental performances. We may conclude that although absolute delinking is far from being achieved for waste generation, there are first positive signals in favour of an increasing relative delinking for waste generation and average robust landfill diversion, and various evidence of a significant role of the EU waste policies implemented in the late 1990s and early 2000s on landfill diversion. Waste prevention is nevertheless the next necessary target of waste regulatory efforts.

Using data sets from Italian provinces that include rich northern and poorer southern regions, this article examines to what extent income and municipal waste generation are linked and at what level of income they become delinked. The analysis shows that the turning point occurs at very high levels of value added per capita (in the range of 22,586 to 31,611), exemplified by a very limited number of wealthy (northern) Italian provinces. The authors also find that some recently adopted waste policy and waste management instruments have influenced waste generation at source, independent of socioeconomic characteristics. This supports the argument that more effective waste management instruments that target waste prevention at the source need to be implemented in line with the stated priorities of the EU and member countries. The findings also imply that developing countries in particular should not wait to implement waste reduction policies until household incomes and consumption levels increase.

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.

The paper provides new empirical evidence on the relationship between environmental efficiency and labour productivity using industry level data. We first provide a critical and extensive discussion around the interconnected issues of environmental efficiency and performance, firm performances and labour productivity, and environmental and non-environmental innovation dynamics. The most recent literature dealing with environmental innovation, environmental regulations and economic performances is taken as reference. We then test a newly adapted EKC hypothesis, by verifying the correlation between the two trends of environmental efficiency (productivity, namely sector emission on added value) and labour productivity (added value on employees) over a dynamic path. We exploit official NAMEA data sources for Italy over 1990-2002 for 29 sectoral branches. The period is crucial since environmental issues and then environmental policies came into the arena, and a restructuring of the economy occurred. It is thus interesting to assess the extent to which capital investments for the economy as a whole are associated with a positive or negative correlation between environmental efficiency of productive branches and labour productivity, often claimed by mainstream theory dealing with innovation in environmental economics. We believe that on the basis of the theoretical and empirical analyses focusing on innovation paths, firm performances and environmental externalities, there are good reasons to expect a positive correlation between environmental and labour productivities, or in alternative terms a negative correlation between mission intensity of production and labour productivity. The tested hypothesis is crucial within the long standing discussion over the potential trade-off or complementarity between environmental and labour productivity, strictly associated with sectoral and national technological innovation paths. The main added value of the paper is the analysis of the aforementioned hypothesis by exploiting a panel data set based on official NAMEA sectoral disaggregated accounting data, providing both cross section heterogeneity and a sufficient time span. We find that for most emissions, if not all, a negative correlation emerges between labour productivity and environmental productivity. Though this trend appears driven by the macro sectors services, manufacturing and industry, this evidence is not homogenous across emissions. In some cases U-shapes arise, mainly for services, and the assessment of Turning Points is crucial. Manufacturing and industry, all in all, seem to have a stronger weight. Overall, then, labour productivity dynamics seem to be complementary to a decreasing emission intensity of productive processes. The extent to which this evidence derives from endogenous market forces, industrial restructuring and/or from policy effects is scope for further research. The relative role of manufacturing and services in explaining this pattern is also to be analysed in future empirical analyses. In addition, the role of capital stocks and trade openness are extensions which may add value to future analyses carried out on the same NAMEA dataset.

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.

The paper addresses the relevancy of networking activities and R&D as main drivers of productivity performance and ouput innovation, for small and medium enterprises (SME) playing in a local economic system. Given the intangible nature of many techno organisational innovation and networking strategies, original recent survey data for manufacturing and services are exploited. The aim is to provide new evidence on the complementarity relationships concerning different networking activities and R&D in a local SME oriented system in Northern Italy. We first introduce a methodological framework to empirically test complementarity among R&D and networking, in a discrete setting. Secondly, we consequently present empirical evidence on productivity drivers and on complementarity between R&D and networking strategies, with respect to firm productivity and process/product output innovation. R&D is a main driver of innovation and productivity, even without networking. This may signify, in association with the evidence on complementarity, that firm expenditures on R&D are a primary driver for performance. The complementarity with networking is a consequential step. Networking by itself cannot thus play a role in stimulating productivity and innovation. It can be a complementary factor in situations where cooperation and networking are needed to achieve economies of scale and/or to merge and integrate diverse skills, technologies and competencies. This is compatible with a framework where networking is the public good part of an impure public good wherein R&D plays the part of the private-led driving force towards structural break from the business as usual scenario. Managers and policy makers should be aware that in order to exploit asset complementarity, possibly transformed into competitive advantages, both R&D and networking are to be sustained and favoured. our evidence suggests that R&D may be a single main driver of performance. Since R&D expenditures are associated with firm size, a policy sustain is to be directed towards firm enlargement. After a certain threshold firms have the force to increase expenditures. The size effect is nevertheless non monotonous. Then, but not least important, for the majority of firms still remaining under a critical size threshold, policy incentives should be directed to R&D in connection with networking, through which a virtuous circle may arise. It is worth noting that it is not networking as such the main engine. Networking elements are crucially linked to innovation dynamics; it is nevertheless innovation that explains and drives networking, and not the often claimed mere existence of local spillovers or of a civic associative culture in the territory. Such public good factors exist but are likely to evolve with and be sustained by firm innovative dynamics.

The paper aims at investigating how far transaction costs economics (TCE) concurs in the explanation of outsourcing decisions in firms characterized by thick industrial relations, that is where unions and employees are involved in, and are sometimes able to affect, the relative managerial decisions through participatory formal and informal mechanisms. What is more, the paper aims at investigating whether the concurrence of TCE and industrial relationships has different outsourcing implications for firms which are also involved in delocalization strategies. An empirical model, translating a set of theoretical correlations between an original outsourcing extent variable, on the one hand, and a number of proxies related to TCE, industrial relations and delocalization, on the other hand, is applied to a representative sample of manufacturing firms for the local production system of Reggio Emilia (RE) (in Northern Italy). Overall, the empirical application shows that the role of TCE in accounting for outsourcing in the LPS of RE is quite blurred, if not even contradicted, while the role of industrial relations emerges instead quite straightforwardly. Finally, RE firms generally use outsourcing and international delocalization in a complementary way, but the correlation between outsourcing and delocalization turns out to be dependent on the kind of activity and of the nature of the delocalization channel.

This paper aims at analysing the role of the environment in innovative strategies based on firm economic performance indicators such as employment, turnover, and labour productivity growth. We exploit a unique dataset of 773 Italian service firms with 20 or more employees comprising 1993-1995 CIS II data on firm innovation strategic motivations and 1995-1998 data on employment, turnover, and labour productivity from the System of the Enterprise Account (SEA). We specify a Gibrat-like empirical model in which the covariates include firm strategies (innovation and environmental), and a set of other explanatory variables and controls. Our econometric findings show a negative link between environmental motivations and growth in employment and turnover and a consequent not significant effect on labour productivity growth. The effect on employment is partly in line with past evidence and may derive from efficiency improvements (dematerialization processes) which also impact on efficiency by reducing workforce number. It is plausible that the net effect derives from the absence of low skilled employment and a creation of high skilled jobs, as a consequence of increased environmental awareness. The effect on turnover shows a negative impact from environmental innovation strategy, implying either a short-medium effect, possibly balanced in the long run by net benefits in terms of higher added value, or a real negative impact, which may be contingent on the observed period, when environmental strategies where not at the heart of strategic management policies. However, productivity-related effects (the core of performance indicators) are not significant. Mainstream hypotheses related to eventual negative impacts are thus not confirmed, although Porter-like effects and virtuous circles between environmentally strategies and performance do not seem to be present.

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 aims at identifying the profile of the outsourcing firm as a four-fold unit of analysis: i.e. as an organizational, production, industrial and innovation unit. Theoretical correlations between outsourcing decisions and outsourcing variables are formulated and then tested with respect to a representative cross-sectional sample of firms of a local manufacturing system in Emilia Romagna (Reggio Emilia). The main result of the paper is that outsourcing decisions are affected by the particular organizational and industrial relations patterns of the context firms operate in, and that the latter affects the interpretative power of theoretical explanations of outsourcing.

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.

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.

This paper investigates the EKC curves for CO2 emissions in a panel of 109 countries during the period 1959-2001. The length of the series makes the application of a heterogeneous estimator suitable from an econometric point of view. The results, based on the hierarchical Bayes estimator, show that different EKC dynamics are associated with the different sub samples of countries considered. On average, more industrialized countries show an EKC evidence in quadratic specifications, which are nevertheless probably evolving into an N shape, emerging from cubic specifications. Less developed countries consistently show that CO2 emissions still rise positively with income, though some signals of an EKC path arise.

The paper aims at ‘embedding’ the outsourcing firm by considering it as a four-fold unit of analysis: i.e. as an organizational, production, industrial and innovation unit. Theoretical correlations between outsourcing decisions and outsourcing variables are formulated and then tested with respect to a representative cross-sectional sample of firms of a local production system in Emilia Romagna (that is, Reggio Emilia). The main result of the paper is that outsourcing decisions are indeed affected by the organizational and industrial relations typical of the context firms are embedded in. Furthermore, the general profile of the Reggio Emilia outsourcing firm is strategic rather than operative. In particular, tapping-into the provider’s resources and competences to eventually promote technological innovation seems more relevant than searching for lower costs by contracting out.

The main idea behind this paper is that social capital is not, as generally suggested by the socio-economic literature, an individual attitude towards something which does not imply privately appropriable economic benefits. Actually, SC might and should be interpreted as a public component of an investment which implies private and public benefits entangled with each other. In order to put forward this idea, a dynamic theoretical model that assumes social capital as the public component of the impure public good R&D is developed. It shows that the ‘civic culture’ of the district area in which the firm works is not sufficient as an incentive to increase its investment in social capital, because this investment strictly depends on the economic convenience of investing in the impure public good. Social capital /networking dynamics might positively and complementarily evolve only if the opportunity cost of investing in innovation is sufficiently low. We consequently focus our attention on a specialized industrial district located in the Emilia Romagna region – the biomedical district of Mirandola (Modena) – characterised by a strong pattern of innovative activity. Using a proxy for innovative activity as dependant variable, we observe that R&D and networking/social capital arise as complementary driving forces for innovation outputs. When empirical evidence confirms that this complementarity plays a key role, and consequently strong links exist between market and non-market dynamics relating to firms, the role for policy actions targeted to social capital is larger. The policy effort should be targeted toward both market and non-market characteristics taken together, rather than solely to the production of (local) public goods (social capital) or innovation inputs as independent elements of firm processes. The input of SC alone is not sufficient to ensure innovation and growth: economic incentives matter. On the other hand, whenever SC dynamics are crucial for R&D private investments, the effect of economic incentives depends on the presence and degree of their complementarity.

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...