The impact of environmental regulation on enterprise innovation is closely related to the competitiveness of the enterprise and sustainable development of the regional economy, but existing research ...does not provide a consistent view. This paper summarizes the impacts of environmental regulation on enterprise innovation from the perspectives of technological innovation, product innovation, system innovation and ecological innovation. We find that the impacts of environmental regulation on enterprise innovation behaviour are complex, and that the impacts can be reflected together by the four aspects above and even by their interaction. Moreover, the impacts are not limited to the creation of new technologies, products, and systems but also include their adoption and application. In particular, whether the Porter hypothesis is true and which versions of the Porter hypothesis environmental regulation causes in enterprise innovation depend on enterprise characteristics, means of environmental regulation, and enterprises' strategic behaviours in an enterprise ecosystem. Finally, we propose five potential research directions: quantifying the degree of enterprise innovation caused by environmental regulation, the impacts of environmental regulation on sustainable economic development from an enterprise ecosystem perspective, the impacts of enterprise innovation on environmental regulation, the role of enterprise initiative in the relationship between environmental regulation and enterprise innovation, and social security issues and the integration of eliminated enterprises resulting from environmental regulation.
In recent years, the global emphasis on environmental protection issues has gradually increased. The existing literature has been divided on whether environmental regulation promotes or inhibits ...industrial development. Can the innovation-driven strategy proposed by China achieve a win-win situation for both? This paper attempts to investigate the technology innovation of China’s three major economic zones in dual environmental regulation effect on industrial structure upgrade. The research was conducted based on Intermediary Effect Model and employing the technique of Image Analysis, panel data of 30 Chinese provincial from in 2005 to 2017 were selected and analyzed. The results demonstrate that the direct effect of formal environmental regulations (ER) on industrial upgrading is an inverted “U” shape, and it is positively affecting industrial upgrading through technological innovation strategies. However, the mediating role of technological innovation under the informal environmental regulation (IER) is negative. The effect of the innovation-driven strategy has regional heterogeneity, and marketization is conducive to industrial upgrading, but increasing dependence on foreign trade is not conducive to industrial upgrading. The research above politically suggests that China should further strengthen formal and informal environmental regulations, the informal environmental regulation system should be improved, and feedback mechanisms such as laws should be established. Meanwhile, the government should carry out innovation-driven strategies based on local conditions, improve the innovation mechanism, and enhance the diffusion of technological innovation.
Public health measures to prevent, detect, and respond to events are essential to control public health risks, including infectious disease outbreaks, as highlighted in the International Health ...Regulations (IHR). In light of the outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), we aimed to review existing health security capacities against public health risks and events.
We used 18 indicators from the IHR State Party Annual Reporting (SPAR) tool and associated data from national SPAR reports to develop five indices: (1) prevent, (2) detect, (3) respond, (4) enabling function, and (5) operational readiness. We used SPAR 2018 data for all of the indicators and categorised countries into five levels across the indices, in which level 1 indicated the lowest level of national capacity and level 5 the highest. We also analysed data at the regional level (using the six geographical WHO regions).
Of 182 countries, 52 (28%) had prevent capacities at levels 1 or 2, and 60 (33%) had response capacities at levels 1 or 2. 81 (45%) countries had prevent capacities and 78 (43%) had response capacities at levels 4 or 5, indicating that these countries were operationally ready. 138 (76%) countries scored more highly in the detect index than in the other indices. 44 (24%) countries did not have an effective enabling function for public health risks and events, including infectious disease outbreaks (7 4% at level 1 and 37 20% at level 2). 102 (56%) countries had level 4 or level 5 enabling function capacities in place. 32 (18%) countries had low readiness (2 1% at level 1 and 30 17% at level 2), and 104 (57%) countries were operationally ready to prevent, detect, and control an outbreak of a novel infectious disease (66 36% at level 4 and 38 21% at level 5).
Countries vary widely in terms of their capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to outbreaks. Half of all countries analysed have strong operational readiness capacities in place, which suggests that an effective response to potential health emergencies could be enabled, including to COVID-19. Findings from local risk assessments are needed to fully understand national readiness capacities in relation to COVID-19. Capacity building and collaboration between countries are needed to strengthen global readiness for outbreak control.
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As an essential way to promote ecological civilization, green finance is attracting wide attention. However, whether green finance can successfully regulate the green technology innovation effect of ...heterogeneous environmental regulations and boost green technology innovation in coordination with heterogeneous environmental regulations remains unclear. Based on the re-measurement of the green finance development index of various provinces and cities in China, this study uses the spatial Durbin model to test the above problems empirically. The results show that green finance and "market incentive" environmental regulations can promote regional green technology innovation, while "command and control" environmental regulations inhibit regional green technology innovation. Green finance plays a negative regulatory role in the mechanism of heterogeneous environmental regulations affecting green technology innovation. Green finance alleviates the negative impact of "command and control" environmental regulations on green technology innovation and weakens the positive impact of "market-incentive" environmental regulations on green technology innovation. In terms of spillover effects, green finance can effectively promote green technology innovation in neighboring regions, while heterogeneous environmental regulations have a crowding-out effect on green technology innovation in neighboring regions.
•Carbon emissions network of OECD countries presents a typical network structure.•Carbon is transferred among European countries along with the international trade.•The impact of countries on the ...edge of the network is still small.•Technology spillovers of environmental regulation on carbon emissions network exist.•Environmental regulation has both inhibition and compensation effects of innovation.
Spatial association of carbon emissions between countries has more to do with trade activities. This paper applies the social network analysis to give a clear picture on the evolutionary characteristics of carbon emissions network of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and investigates the technology spillovers of environmental regulation on the carbon emissions network. Empirical results show that: First, the carbon emissions network of OECD countries presents a typical network structure with increasing network density, correlation and decreasing network efficiency. Second, carbon is mainly transferred among European countries along with the international trade, and the impact of countries on the edge of the network is still small. Finally, the U-shape relationship between environmental regulation and carbon emissions network is identified. The innovation inhibition effect exists when the environmental regulation is in a low level, and after arriving at the threshold value, the innovation compensation effect begins to appear. Our findings implied that when making policies for carbon emissions reduction, countries should strengthen the cross-regional communication and fully consider the spatial correlation effect. Some international organizations are supposed to play a leading role in reducing global carbon emissions by controlling the carbon transfer.
Regulations that govern the social and environmental impacts of global firms and markets without state enforcement are a relatively new dimension of global business regulation. The growth of such ...voluntary “civil regulations” reflects both the expansion of legitimate authority in the global economy outside the state and the increasing use of alternative regulatory instruments to govern firms, including self-regulation, market-based instruments, and soft laws. In response to global social activism, many firms have adopted voluntary regulatory standards to avoid additional regulation and/or to protect their reputations and brands. Activists have targeted highly visible firms and have been willing to work cooperatively with them. The most important civil regulations are multi-stockholder codes, whose governance is shared by firms and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and which rely on product and producer certifications. Such codes face the challenge of acquiring legitimacy and of persuading both firms and NGOs of the value of their standards. The emergence of civil regulation addresses but does not resolve the challenge of making global firms and markets more effectively and democratically governed.
Problem definition
: We develop a framework for studying the impact of voluntary ecolabels and mandatory environmental regulation on
green product development among competing firms.
...Academic/practical relevance
: We contribute to the academic literature on environmental
quality competition by explicitly accounting for the credibility of environmental claims made by firms, and by exploring the implications for society of two mechanisms
used to remedy credibility-related consumer discounting of firms’ self-declared environmental qualities. We draw parallels between our findings and instances of
environmental labeling and regulation from industry to highlight the practical implications of our study.
Methodology
: We use a
game-theoretic framework to analyze a consumer-driven model of green product development.
Results
: Credibility asymmetry drives product
differentiation between two competing firms. The less credible firm always adopts external certification, while the more credible firm does so only if its
credibility is sufficiently low. Credibility may also determine whether or not the government should intervene. In the absence of an external certifier, the regulator
should intervene by imposing a mandatory environmental standard that is decreasing in stringency as the credibility of the more credible firm increases. In the
presence of a certifier, the regulator should intervene if neither firm is sufficiently credible, or if consumers do not value environmental stewardship highly.
Managerial implications
:
We identify how and when government should (and should not) intervene to stimulate green product development when competing firms can use self-labels or external
certifications to communicate their environmental performance to consumers. We also determine the optimal strategies for the competing firms and external certifiers.
Sri Lanka has reduced its overall suicide rate by 70% over the last two decades through means restriction, through a series of government regulations and bans removing highly hazardous pesticides ...from agriculture. We aimed to identify the key pesticide(s) now responsible for suicides in rural Sri Lanka to provide data for further pesticide regulation.
We performed a secondary analysis of data collected prospectively during a cluster randomized controlled trial in the Anuradhapura district of Sri Lanka from 2011 to 16. The identity of pesticides responsible for suicides were sought from medical or judicial medical notes, coroners' records, and the person's family. Trend analysis was done using a regression analysis with curve estimation to identify relative importance of key pesticides.
We identified 337 suicidal deaths. Among them, the majority 193 (57.3%) were due to ingestion of pesticides while 82 (24.3%) were due to hanging. A specific pesticide was identified in 105 (54.4%) of the pesticide suicides. Ingestion of carbosulfan or profenofos was responsible for 59 (56.2%) of the suicides with a known pesticide and 17.5% of all suicides. The increasing trend of suicides due to carbosulfan and profenofos over time was statistically significant (R square 0.846, F 16.541, p 0.027).
Ingestion of pesticides remains the most important means of suicides in rural Sri Lanka. The pesticides that were once responsible for most pesticide suicides have now been replaced by carbosulfan and profenofos. Their regulation and replacement in agriculture with less hazardous pesticides will further reduce the incidence of both pesticide and overall suicides in rural Sri Lanka.
There is a great variation across states in nurse practitioner (NP) scope of practice moderated by state regulations. The purpose of this study was to synthesize the evidence from studies of the ...impact of state NP practice regulations on U.S. health care delivery outcomes (e.g., health care workforce, access to care, utilization, care quality, or cost of care), guided by Donabedian’s structure, process, and outcomes framework. This systematic review was performed using Medline, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and PubMed according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic and Meta-Analysis on the literature from January 2000 to August 2019. The results indicate that expanded state NP practice regulations were associated with greater NP supply and improved access to care among rural and underserved populations without decreasing care quality. This evidence could provide guidance for policy makers in states with more restrictive NP practice regulations when they consider granting greater practice independence to NPs.
Since the Chinese economy has entered the new normal stage, the transformation of China's coal-mining cities has drawn considerable attention at all levels of government in China. In this paper, ...environmental regulation, resource curse, and economic growth are incorporated into one novel research framework. Based on panel data for 30 typical coal-mining cities, from 2005–2015, we mainly use the system generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM)to analyze the existence of a resource curse and attempt to analyze whether its crowding-out effects can be weakened by environmental regulations. The results show that in the whole sample period, there is a resource curse effect in China's coal-mining cities, and the direct effect of environmental regulation on economic growth presents an “N” curve relationship. In the sub-sample period, although all coal-mining cities have a resource curse effect in the first period (2005–2010), in the second period (2011–2015), the resource curse effect is no longer significant, especially in cities with a high economic development level, and the resource curse has been transformed into resource blessing. Additionally, according to indirect conduction effect analysis, excessive reliance on resources limits the development of human capital, technological innovation, and manufacturing. However, environmental regulations can weaken the transmission of resource dependence by promoting human capital and technological innovation, of which the promotion of technological innovation is the most significant. Therefore, environmental regulation may be a new and notable perspective that can help coal-mining cities turn the “curse” into “blessing” and promote the transformation of their green sustainable development.
•Environmental regulation, resource curse and economic growth are included in the same analytical framework.•Resource curse effect does exist in Chinese coal-mining cities in the whole sample period, but it is not significant in the sub-sample period (2011-2015).•Resource dependence has the most significant effect on technological innovation.•Environmental regulation can effectively impede the transmission of resource curse.•The effective use of environmental regulation plays an important role in turning “curse” into “blessing” in coal-mining cities.
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