Stringency of environmental regulations vs. global competitiveness: Empirical analysis

Abstract

At the current stage of socio-economic development of the countries in the context of numerous international summits on climate change, the emergence problem of additional regulatory and tax burdens of environmental standards is nowadays actualized, which creates new challenges and opportunities for the competitiveness of national economies. The formation of a qualitatively new model of greening national economies in the context of welfare is linked to the emergence of radically new challenges: climate change, an aging population, environmental and food crises, new demands on the quality and quantity of public goods, etc. All this requires a review of the fundamental foundations of macroeconomic and institutional analysis of welfare states in the context of the ecological vector of development. A comprehensive statistical analysis of long-term indicators of global competitiveness, environmental performance and the stringency of environmental regulations on a large sample of countries confirms the hypothesis that it is possible to internalize the significant stringency of environmental regulations in welfare states and maintain a high level of global competitiveness against the background of high quality environmental goods. The clinal nature of the country ordination according to the studied indices indicates the absence of a wide gap between countries of different clusters and the possibility of increasing the global competitiveness and quality of the environmental performance of the lower groups by strengthening the stringency of environmental regulations while improving the quality of their institutions and inclusion (through the development of education, science, culture) into the system of individual and social values of environmental preferences.