Massimiliano Mazzanti

Environmental innovations, local networks and internationalization

This paper investigates the drivers of the environmental innovations (EI) introduced by firms in local production systems (LPS). The role of firm network relationships, agglomeration economies and internationalization strategies is analysed for a sample of 555 firms in the Emilia-Romagna region, North-East of Italy. Cooperating with ‘qualified’ local actors – i.e. universities and suppliers – is the most important driver of EI for most firms, along with their training policies and IT innovations. The role of agglomeration economies is less clear and seems to depend on the EI propensity of more locally oriented firms playing in district areas, which might even turn agglomeration into dis-economies. Networking effects and agglomeration economies are instead found to strongly promote the adoption of EI by multinational firms, thus highlighting the importance of local-global interactions. We provide some interesting findings for particular kinds of challenging EI in fields as CO2 abatement and ISO labelling, generally extending the analysis EI driver by joining local and international factors.

Discrete Choice Models and Valuation Experiments

This paper presents the results of a choice experiment carried out from August to October 2000 on the visitors of the Galleria Borghese Museum, a worldwide known heritage site located in Rome. The main objective of this work is to study the relevancy of choice experiment techniques as a tool aimed at measuring economic values and assessing user preferences concerning the multi-attribute and multi-value services as supplied by cultural institutions. A set of alternative incremental changes in service attributes showing improvements in supply are designed and presented to visitors. Alternative conditional logit specifications are used for analysing stated choices over the hypothetical incremental changes in museum attributes. Willingness to pay for incremental variations concerning site attributes is positive and statistically significant for most changes. Conditional logit specifications, which incorporate heterogeneity by adding interaction socio-economic terms, are generally robust and do not violate the IIA assumption. In addition, in the present case study, non-IIA models do not outperform conditional logit models. Choice experiments confirm as being a practical and effective tool for non-market valuation, and they should be used to provide information to decision makers for justifying demand led policies.

Regional and Sector Environmental Efficiency Empirical Evidence from Structural Shift-Share Analysis of Namea Data

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.

Municipal Waste Generation and Socioeconomic Drivers Evidence From Comparing Northern and Southern Italy

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.

Embedding environmental innovation in local production systems: SME strategies, networking and industrial relations: evidence on innovation drivers in industrial districts

Technological innovation is a key factor for achieving better environmental performances. Its role is even more relevant in local productions system, where innovation density, knowledge spillovers and externalities are concentrated in a circumscribed territory. The paper exploits new data for a sample of manufacturing firms in Northern Italy. New evidence is provided by testing a set of hypotheses, concerning primarily the role of environmental‐devoted R&D, networking activities, quality/nature of industrial relations. The role played by environmental policy pressure, structural firm features and past firm performances is also investigated to account for more exogenous forces. We show that structural characteristics of the firm appear to matter less than R&D, induced policy costs and innovative‐oriented industrial relations. Environmental auditing schemes also show some relevant correlation to innovation adoptions. R&D efforts appear to be associated to networking activities, which substitute for size‐related economies of scale. Overall, endogenous factors driven by firm strategy or local idiosyncratic features matter more than exogenous and structural firm factors.

The Determinants of Residential Water Demand Empirical Evidence for a Panel of Italian Municipalities

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.

Environmental innovations, complementarity and local/global cooperation: evidence from North-East Italian industry

This paper exploits a dataset of 555 industrial firms, located in the Emilia Romagna region in 2006–2008, to analyse complementarity in ecoinnovation (EI) and to test the role of firm cooperation and internationally oriented strategies. Results show that the degree of complementarity between various EI factors is quite high with networking and corporate social responsibility playing dominant roles. EIs do not undermine economic performance, either in the short run or in the context of the global financial crisis. Econometric analyses highlight that international characteristics, especially foreign ownership, and networking with other firms and institutions are important for EI adoption, while general research and development is less so. Over and above the structural features of firms, strategic relationships within regions and at the international level are relevant and differentiate innovative performance. This study provides an in-depth regional investigation which complement the information gathered in the last wave of the community innovation survey which included questions on EI over the same period and is available for France, Italy and Germany.

Are You Sure You Want to Waste Policy Chances? Waste Generation, Landfill Diversion and Environmental Policy Effectiveness in the EU15

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.

On the Green Side of Trade Competitiveness? Environmental Policies and Innovation in the EU

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.

Waste Generation, Incineration and Landfill Diversion: De-Coupling Trends, Socio-Economic Drivers and Policy Effectiveness in the EU

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.