Copyright (c) 2010 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott Recent documents in Robert J R Elliott en-us Sun, 08 Aug 2010 01:30:58 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/24 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/24 Fri, 06 Aug 2010 10:43:15 PDT Within a compensating wage differential framework we investigate whether there is a wage premium for working in a pollution intensive industry. Our results for the economy as a whole suggest a small wage premium of approximately one quarter of one percent associated with the risk of working in a dirty job. This premium rises to over fifteen percent for those individuals who work in one of the five dirtiest industries. We also find evidence of a fatal risk wage premium, providing estimates of the value of a statistical life of between £12 million and £19 million (2000 prices). Matthew A. Cole Labour Economics http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/23 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/23 Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:41:13 PDT 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 suggest 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. Matthew A. Cole Environmental Performance of Firms and Industries http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/22 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/22 Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:06:18 PST 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 lead 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 data set for Japan and examine whether Japanese industries have relocated production to their ASEAN neighbours in response to the relative stringency of Japanese environmental regulations. Not only do we find no evidence for pollution haven consistent behaviour 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. Robert J.R Elliott Environmental Regulations and FDI http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/21 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/21 Tue, 12 Feb 2008 04:53:01 PST The pollution haven hypothesis (PHH) and the capital-labour hypothesis (KLH) state that the relative level of a country’s environmental regulations and capital and labour endowments determines its comparative advantage respectively. Since these hypotheses lead to conflicting predictions as to whether the North or the South will specialise in pollution-intensive production, this paper examines whether changes in trade and specialisation patterns allow us to distinguish between pollution haven and factor endowment effects. We employ a methodology that enables us to present North-South trade patterns over time and to identify those periods when trade patterns were consistent with either the PHH and/or the KLH as a foundation for undertaking more detailed econometric studies. A K.M Azhar Environmental Regulations and International Trade http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/20 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/20 Tue, 24 Jul 2007 02:49:03 PDT According to the “smooth adjustment hypothesis”, the labour-market adjustment costs entailed by trade liberalisation are lower if trade expansion is intra-industry rather than inter-industry in nature. In this paper, we study the link between trade and labour market changes in UK manufacturing industries during the 1980s. We use industry-level measures of unemployment duration and wage variability as proxies for adjustment costs, and we relate them to various measures of intra-industry trade. Our evidence offers some support for the smooth adjustment hypothesis. Marius Brulhart International Trade http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/19 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/19 Tue, 24 Jul 2007 02:45:14 PDT David Greenaway International Trade http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/18 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/18 Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:16:33 PDT Globalisation and closer regional integration has led to significant increases in trade between nations that in turn impacts on existing long standing trade partnerships. A consequence of changing trade patterns is an increase in the pressure for resources to reallocate between industries and sectors. This paper provides an integrated approach to the analysis of trade induced adjustment that complements the existing literature. Adjustment pressures are documented in accordance with the theoretical underpinnings of the smooth adjustment hypothesis and satisfy a number of desirable criteria, monotonicity, consistency and country specificity. The applicability of our approach is examined using UK manufacturing data. A. K.M. Azhar International Trade http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/17 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/17 Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:56:02 PDT 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. Matthew A. Cole Environmental Economics General http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/16 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/16 Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:43:03 PDT We investigate occupational attainment as well as estimating earnings differentials for non-white migrants and non-white natives including occupational effects. We control for the occupational selection of immigrants and compare across native and immigrant groups. Relative to white natives, we find no evidence of an ethnic pay disadvantage for white and South Asian Professional workers. Although occupational segregation and other human capital and socio-economic factors provide a partial explanation for the raw earnings differential, evidence of ethnic based disadvantage in most occupations persists. Robert J.R. Elliott Labour Economics http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/15 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/15 Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:29:59 PDT In an increasingly integrated world, falling trade barriers mean that the role environmental regulations play in shaping a country's comparative advantage is greater than ever. This has lead to fears that “dirty” industries will relocate to developing regions where environmental regulations may be less stringent. A number of reasons have been offered to explain why, despite anecdotal evidence and the predictions of theoretical studies, little empirical verification for the existence of pollution havens has been found. Little attention, however, has been paid to the capital intensity of pollution intensive sectors. We investigate the relationship between US outward FDI and factor endowments across sectors to two developing countries. We highlight the role of capital and believe it partially explains why pollution havens are not more widespread. Our approach also highlights those countries that are likeliest to become pollution havens. A multivariate analysis reveals some evidence of pollution haven consistent behavior. Matthew A. Cole Environmental Regulations and FDI http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/14 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/14 Fri, 13 Jul 2007 01:12:18 PDT The relationship between trade liberalisation and the environment has been the subject of a growing body of literature in recent years. One particular focus of attention has been whether environmental regulations are influencing patterns of international trade. This paper aims to examine this issue in the context of the Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) model of trade, but also in a 'new' trade model characterised by monopolistic competition and differentiated products. Our use of the HOV model improves upon a well cited study by Tobey (1990) in many ways, not least by allowing for the possible endogeneity of environmental regulations. We find no significant relationship between such regulations and 'dirty' net exports. The 'new' trade model explains the presence of both intra- and inter-industry trade and we again allow for the possible endogeneity of regulations. We believe this to be the first study to assess the role of environmental regulations within a 'new' trade model, but also the first to allow for the endogeneity of regulations in a cross-country model of trade. We find environmental regulations to be a statistically significant determinant of the share of inter-industry trade (net trade) and we find this significance to increase when endogeneity is controlled for. Robert J.R. Elliott Environmental Regulations and International Trade http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/13 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/13 Fri, 13 Jul 2007 01:02:20 PDT Using a modified gravity equation, this paper examines ASEAN intra- and extra-regional bias in bilateral trade flows and how these relationships have altered over time. We pay particular attention to the periods before and after the signing of AFTA as well as the crucial years prior to and following the Asian crisis. Given the ‘openness’ of ASEAN countries we consider not only intra-ASEAN trade but also the effect of AFTA on non-members. We find that trade flows were not significantly affected in the years immediately following the signing of the AFTA agreement and also that the traditional stance of ASEAN countries to outward-oriented economic activity has not been significantly damaged but rather stimulated by the AFTA process and/or the Asian economic crisis. We do find, however, that that one effect of the Asian economic crisis was to generate a stronger desire to source imports from within the region. Robert J.R. Elliott International Trade http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/12 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/12 Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:13:59 PDT A relatively recent development in the intra-industry trade (IIT) literature is the measurement of the simultaneous import and export of quality-differentiated products, commonly known as vertical and horizontal IIT. A recent paper from Azhar and Elliott [Azhar, A. K. M. & Elliott, R. J. R. (2006), On the Measurement of Product Quality in Intra-Industry Trade, Review of World Economics, Vol 142 no 3, pp 476–495] analyses various approaches for disentangling vertical and horizontal IIT and suggests a complementary methodology. To investigate the robustness and sensitivity of the existing approaches we examine data on the nature of trade flows between China and its East Asian neighbours and show that in 2002 China tended to export low quality versions of its manufactured goods to Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. A. K.M. Azhar International Trade http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/11 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/11 Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:22:37 PDT Marius Brulhart International Trade http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/10 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/10 Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:51:48 PDT The relationship between the ability of workers to change job, sector or industry and the short-run adjustment costs associated with a reallocation of labor is the subject of lively debate among academics. This paper examines recent sector and industry level labor market adjustment in the UK using data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey. We explore the link between the nature of UK trade patterns and labor adjustment within the manufacturing sector and employ a multinomial logit approach to examine the determinants of “within” and “between” industry mobility. By controlling for individual skill specificity we find some evidence of a link between intra-industry trade and intra-industry labor adjustment. Robert J.R. Elliott Labour Economics International Trade http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/9 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/9 Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:43:14 PDT We re-examine the relationship between intra-industry trade and labour reallocation, using individual-level data on manufacturing worker moves in the United Kingdom. The contribution of this analysis is twofold. First, we estimate the impact of intra-industry trade on worker moves between occupations as well as between industries. Second, we run individual-level regressions that allow us to control for worker heterogeneity. Our results suggest that intra-industry trade does have the stipulated attenuating effect on worker moves, both between occupations and between industries, but that this effect is relatively small compared to other determinants of labour reallocation. Marius Brulhart Labour Economics International Trade http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/8 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/8 Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:35:01 PDT The world has witnessed a dramatic increase in trade over the last forty years. Much of this growth in trade is intra-industry in nature. A relatively recent development in the intra-industry trade (IIT) literature is the measurement of the simultaneous import and export of quality-differentiated products, commonly known as vertical and horizontal IIT. In this paper we compare the Greenaway, Hine and Milner (1994) and Fontagné and Freudenberg (1997) approaches to disentangling vertical and horizontal intra-industry trade and examine some of the implications of employing simple ratios to define the boundary between product quality types. We present a complementary approach based on the traditional Grubel and Lloyd (GL) index and demonstrate with numerical examples its versatility and applicability at the product level. A. K.M. Azhar International Trade http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/7 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/7 Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:12:31 PDT The ability of workers to change job, sector or occupation and the costs associated with a reallocation of labour is the subject of lively debate among academics. This paper examines occupational and sectoral dimensions of labour mobility in the UK between 1985-2000 using data from the Labour Force Survey. Specifically, we attempt to shed some light on the complex relationship between the flexibility of the labour market, the generality and specificity of skills and the ability of individuals to move between and within sectors as well as within and between occupations. Occupational skill specificity and previous sector of employment are shown to affect mobility jointly and individually. Absolute skill differentials also affect mobility with the less skilled exhibiting a greater propensity to change sector and occupation simultaneously. Robert J.R. Elliott Labour Economics http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/6 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/6 Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:03:48 PDT We suggest a novel perspective on the relationship between the stringency of environmental policies and foreign direct investment (FDI). We develop a political economy model with imperfect product market competition where local and foreign firms jointly lobby the local government for a favorable pollution tax. FDI is found to affect environmental policy, and the effect is conditional on the local government’s degree of corruptibility. If the degree of corruptibility is sufficiently high (low), FDI leads to less (more) stringent environmental policy, and FDI thus contributes to (mitigates) the creation of a pollution haven. Our empirical results using panel data from 33 countries support the model’s predictions. Matthew A. Cole Environmental Regulations and FDI http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/5 http://works.bepress.com/rob_elliott/5 Mon, 09 Jul 2007 12:49:38 PDT This paper argues that pollution intensive sectors may be subject to opposing forces of comparative advantage since these sectors are also typically capital intensive, yet regions with low environmental regulations tend to be those that are the least capital abundant. We examine therefore, whether compositional changes in pollution arising from trade liberalization originate due to differences in capital-labor endowments and/or differences in environmental regulations. The contribution of the paper is threefold; first, we provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of the determinants of four common pollutants, paying particular attention to the nature of the trade-induced composition effect; second, we investigate whether the result of Antweiler et al. (2001), who find evidence that both environmental regulations and capital-labor endowments determine sulfur dioxide concentrations, also holds for sulfur dioxide emissions; third, we examine whether this result holds for altogether different pollutants. Our results, while providing partial support for Antweiler et al., also raise a number of points for discussion. Matthew A. Cole Environmental Regulations and International Trade