KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business, Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Hendrik Conscienceplein 8, 2000, Antwerp, Belgium.
KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business, Department of Financial Management, Hendrik Conscienceplein 8, 2000, Antwerp, Belgium.
J Environ Manage. 2022 Nov 1;321:115839. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.115839. Epub 2022 Aug 12.
This paper explores how cross-country differences in environmental regulatory stringency among member states of the world's largest multinational cap-and-trade system, the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), influenced the FDI location choice of listed multinationals (MNEs) regulated by the environmental policy. After controlling for other country characteristics driving FDI location choice, we find that the likelihood of EU ETS-covered MNEs locating new FDI projects in less environmentally stringent member states strongly depends on firm- and industry-specific environmental characteristics during the system's first two phases. Our results are robust to different measures of environmental stringency and provide evidence for the existence of an intra-regional pollution haven effect (PHE). This investment behavior by MNEs is, moreover, only found in the industries least compensated for the environmental costs induced by the policy. This suggests that the EU inadvertently promoted an intra-regional PHE not only by allowing cross-country variation in environmental stringency but also by overly focusing on and compensating for external carbon leakage risk. Our conclusions have major implications for countries and regions currently establishing or implementing an emissions trading system.
本文探讨了世界上最大的多国总量管制与交易制度——欧盟排放交易体系（EU ETS）成员国之间在环境监管严格程度上的跨国差异如何影响受环境政策监管的上市跨国公司（MNE）的外国直接投资（FDI）选址选择。在控制了其他推动 FDI 选址选择的国家特征之后，我们发现，在 EU ETS 覆盖的 MNE 中，将新项目投资于环境监管宽松程度较低的成员国的可能性强烈取决于系统前两个阶段的公司和行业特定的环境特征。我们的结果对于不同的环境严格程度衡量标准都是稳健的，并为存在区域内污染避难所效应（PHE）提供了证据。此外，这种 MNE 的投资行为仅在受政策引起的环境成本补偿最少的行业中发现。这表明，欧盟不仅通过允许跨国环境监管严格程度的差异，而且还通过过度关注和补偿外部碳泄漏风险，无意中促进了区域内的 PHE。我们的结论对当前正在建立或实施排放交易体系的国家和地区具有重大意义。
