The Environmental Performance of Firms

NEP: New Economics Papers Environmental Economics list the following paper in their new releases now forthcoming in Ecological Economics.

Getting environment and labour data for a country such as Ghana required some serious leg work but inevitably the quality of data prevented us getting a better grip on this important (at least to us) topic. Quality of data can be crucial to the eventual journal destination.

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The Environmental Performance of Firms: The Role of Foreign Ownership, Training, and Experience

Date: 2007-08

By: Matthew A Cole
Robert R J Elliott
Eric Strobl

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bir:birmec:07-08&r=env [PDF]

In this paper we extend the debate on the environmental implications of foreign direct investment in developing countries by examining a new mechanism through which foreign influence can affect the environmental performance of firms. We focus on the extent to which key workers who have had previous training or experience in a foreign owned firm transfer and utilise their knowledge gained to the benefit of the local environment. To this end we use detailed firm-level data on manufacturing firms in Ghana. Our econometric results sugggest that the foreign training of a firm's decision maker does reduce fuel use, particularly so in foreign owned firms. Foreign ownership per se does not influence fuel use or total energy use but is found to increase electricity use, perhaps the cleanest form of energy used by Ghanaian firms.
Keywords: Environment, Spillovers, FOreign Direct Investment
JEL: Q56 Q52 F21 F23

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