Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/192339 
Year of Publication: 
2003
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Papers No. 357
Publisher: 
Statistics Norway, Research Department, Oslo
Abstract: 
Although environmental regulations may imply a cost increase on firm's conventional input factors, such regulations could stimulate the incentives to improve factor productivity. Productivity measures including indicators capturing environmental improvements may also show higher or lower progress than productivity measures ignoring environmental aspects. We apply a Malmquist productivity index approach on micro data for the Norwegian pulp and paper industry, and find that the overall productivity growth accounting for changes in emissions of COD to water is higher than the growth in the productivity measure including conventional inputs only. We find the opposite result when including emissions of acids and climate gases to air. This is probably due to environmental regulations with opposing effects on different emissions. A decomposition of the Malmquist index into a technical efficiency change factor and a technical change component shows that the frontier technology has changed, while the average distance to the frontier has increased.
Subjects: 
Emissions
Productivity change
Paper and pulp
Malmquist index
Frontier technology
JEL: 
L73
O12
O14
O33
O41
Q48
R38
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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