The impact of the transition to a green economy on Romania’s economic growth

Purpose. To identify the main trends caused by the divergence of the policy of Ukraine and the EU in the formation and accumulation of waste and threats to the environment. Methodology. Using the methods of content analysis, quantitative and qualitative comparison, EU policy on waste management is analyzed and logical generalization is used to establish the features of waste management financing for industries and regions. Findings. Regional irregularities of industrial waste accumulation, including hazardous waste, trends of their change are revealed. The reasons for regional peculiarities of waste management in the EU and Ukraine are established. It is established that the distribution of capital investments both in environmental protection in general and in waste management in particular does not always coincide with the leading regions of accumulation. It is established that limitation of financial instruments for waste management only by budgetary resources leads to a reduction in capital investment. A comparison of trends in environmental spending and waste management indicated a significant difference. Analysis of environmental investment by polluting industries, which are unevenly represented in different regions, revealed a significant difference between them. Originality. Regions that are the main polluters have been identified. The discrepancy between trends of capital investments in environmental protection and waste management was revealed. It is established that the list of leading regions in terms of capital investments in environmental protection does not correlate with the list of leading regions of waste accumulation. It is pointed out that uneven investment creates risks of increasing the rate of waste accumulation, in particular hazardous waste. Forecasting of indicators of waste management of the following periods is carried out. Practical value. There are risks of increasing the rate of waste accumulation, especially hazardous waste, both in Ukraine in general and in some regions, inequalities in some areas in the amount of capital investment into environmental protection, which will form an effective waste management policy. Identifying common features and differences in waste management in the EU and Ukraine will allow implementing effective environmental protection tools, reducing risks in industrial waste management.

This paper takes the impact of economic growth on environmental pollution in Liaoning Province as the research object. After analyzing the status quo of economic growth and environmental pollution in Liaoning Province, four environmental pollution indicators (industrial wastewater discharge, industrial waste gas emissions, industrial sulfur dioxide emissions, and industrial dust emissions) and an economic growth indicator (per capita GDP) are selected. After an economic model is established to focus on the real impact of Liaoning’s economic growth on environmental pollution, it is found that the impact of Liaoning’s economic growth on environmental pollution does not conform to the traditional Environmental Kuznets Curve. Through analysis, it is concluded that economic growth has affected the four environmental indicators to varying degrees. Among them, industrial wastewater discharge, industrial sulfur dioxide emissions, and industrial dust emissions drop after rising, and industrial dust emissions have been on the rise all the time. Considering the realities and characteristics of Liaoning Province, the author has proposed five countermeasures and suggestions for coordinating the relationship between economic growth and environmental protection in Liaoning Province, which are, optimize the industrial structure to promote economic development in the direction of environmental protection; focus on pollution prevention to take a new road to industrialization of circular economy; tap the full potential of market mechanism to realize the innovation of environmental protection system; actively promote the application of low-carbon energy to increase its proportion in total energy consumption; increase investment in environmental protection to improve investment structure and efficiency of environmental protection.

The article justifies the mission of environmental investment in the context of the neo-industrial paradigm of modern development. This approach considers socio-economic development in its organic connection with the environment (the green lifestyle). Environmental investment involves solving the complex growth dilemma of the economy by reducing the negative impacts of the latter on the environment and introducing positive social changes. The authors determined the role of this process in the neo-industrial aspect of economic growth. The goal of this research is to prove the hypothesis of the interinfluence between environmental investment and economic growth. The authors built a multi-factor regression model to analyze the data, which showed a statistically significant relationship between environmental investment and Russia’s GDP growth during 2000–2017. This led to the conclusion that the tightening of environmental policies in Russia is accompanied by not a decrease but an increase in the real GDP. On the basis of tree clustering and k-means clustering, the authors classified the regions of Russia and found that the high level of air pollution is not always accompanied by an increase in investment in environmental protection and three atypical clusters were identified. Moreover, the authors identified the main factors hindering environmental investment in the modern Russian economy, as well as determined the main conditions for its enhancement, which will increase the country’s potential for economic growth in the long run, considering its neo-industrial accumulation.

Environmental protection concerns the global and long-term development of the social economy. The negative effects of production and management activities of pollution enterprises on the environment attract more and more attention from the whole society. The government is not only continuously strengthening production regulation, responsibility monitoring and establishment of rules and regulations of pollution enterprises, but also increasing supports to environmental-friendly development of pollution enterprises. To explore influences of environmental regulations and environmental subsidies on enterprise investment to environmental protection, influences of environmental subsidies under environmental regulations were discussed through the propensity matching using data of listed enterprises in China’s pollution industry from 2013 to 2019. Results demonstrate that environmental subsidies promote the growth of enterprise investment to environmental protection significantly and environmental regulations are the primary influencing factor. According to heterogeneity analysis, environmental subsidies have significant positive effects on the investment in environmental protection of state-owned enterprises and private enterprises. The quantity and amplitude of investment in environmental protection of state-owned enterprises are more prominent. Environmental subsidies significantly promote investment in environmental protection of enterprises where senior executives have a technological background, but they have no significant influences on enterprises where senior executives have no technological background. Conclusions have some policy significance: government urges pollution enterprises to increase investment in environmental protection and pursue sustainable development from perspectives of incentives (increasing economic subsidies) and pressure (developing collaborative effect of environmental regulation).

Improving the capacity of solid waste governance is of great significance to alleviate environmental pollution. The current study analyzes the internal mechanism of investment in environmental protection, green innovation, and solid waste governance capacity. From 2011 to 2018, panel data for 30 provincial units in China were collected. The spatial econometric model and threshold regression model were used to approach study objectives. The results found that green innovation has a significant role in promoting solid waste governance capacity and the spatial spillover effect is obvious. In particular, green invention patent has a core stimulating effect; investment in environmental protection positively moderates the relationship between green innovation and solid waste governance capacity, and the main direction is green utility model patent. However, the spatial spillover effect is not obvious. Moreover, the moderating effect has obvious spatial heterogeneity, especially in the Eastern region. Further analysis showed that there is a single threshold effect of green innovation on solid waste governance capacity. When investment in environmental protection reaches the threshold value of 12.40, the effect of green innovation on solid waste governance capacity is further enhanced. The results provide an important theoretical and practical reference value for China to improve the capacity of solid waste governance.

Study objective: This paper explores the relation between healthcare expenditures (HCEs) and environmental variables in Ontario, Canada. Design: The authors used a sequential two stage regression model to control for...

The concept of a green economy has gained significant attention, aiming to achieve sustainable development without environmental harm. This study examines Kazakhstan's transition to a green economy, focusing on indicators such as green innovation, investment in environmental protection, and green taxes. Despite Kazakhstan's commitment to a carbon-neutral economy by 2060, significant challenges were identified. The methodology involved three steps: descriptive analysis of green economy indicators for 2016–2022, correlation analysis to identify significant relationships, and trend forecasting for 2023–2025 using a linear regression model. This approach provided a thorough examination of the green economy's current state and future projections. Over the study period, the number of organizations engaged in environmental innovation and their activity levels have decreased. Investments in environmental protection showed initial growth, but declined in recent years. Conversely, there has been an increase in environmental taxes, reflecting the government’s focus on tax instruments to promote sustainable development. Correlation analysis revealed complex interdependencies, indicating that higher investments and taxes are often associated with lower levels of green innovation activity. Projections for 2023-2025 suggest a further decline in green innovation indicators unless significant policy measures are taken. The study underscores the need for a balanced approach that encourages green innovation while maintaining robust investment and tax bases.

The article clarifies that the volume of capital investment increase in environmental protection directly depends on financing due to depreciation and retained earnings, as well as on the attraction of private financial resources. The components of expenses for environmental protection have been studied, including: capital investments and current expenses. The concepts “capital investments in environmental protection”, “ecological investments”, “ecologically-oriented investments” and “nature-reproducing investments” have been summarized. The main sources of financing investments in environmental protection have been investigated. It has been found that, according to statistical data, the assessment of capital investments in environmental protection includes the analysis of: atmospheric air protection and climate change problems; treatment of return water; waste management; protection and rehabilitation of soil, underground and surface waters; other measures. The evaluation of the level of investments in environmental protection efficiency, which is carried out according to indicators for the analyzed period, has been provided. The volumes of capital investments and current costs for environmental protection in the processing industry of Ukraine for 2017-2021 have been analyzed. The share of costs for environmental protection at the expense of state and local budgets for 2017-2021 has been analyzed. It has been determined that the planning of the activities of industrial enterprises is carried out within the framework of the developed Target Program for the greening of production in any region of Ukraine, as coordinated, complex actions within the territorial and production entities allow to reduce the anthropogenic load on the surrounding natural environment. It has been established that among the most relevant options for greening the production of industrial enterprises are the following: modernization of treatment equipment and treatment facilities, introduction of low-waste and zero-waste innovative technologies into production. It has been established that in order to approve options for greening the production of domestic industrial enterprises, a preliminary analysis of their feasibility is first carried out by the method of expert evaluations according to parameters.

This paper simulates environmental protection investment (EPI) response strategies by constructing a discrete model of the interaction between EPI and economic growth while constantly improving EPI response strategies according to the simulation results. The oriented elasticity EPI was superior to the perfect elasticity EPI from the perspective of environmental quality. However, oriented elasticity EPI was not always superior to perfect elasticity EPI from the perspective of gross products. Thus, when the proportionality coefficient between the range of investment change and range of environmental quality change is less than or equal to 1.4, the maximum output of oriented elasticity EPI is higher than the maximum output of perfect elasticity EPI. The gap between oriented and perfect elasticity EPI decreases when proportionality coefficient increases. When the value of proportionality coefficient is greater than 1.4, oriented elasticity EPI is not superior to perfect elasticity EPI. Therefore, in view of the above defects, we proposed and simulated a minimal maintenance EPI. The environmental quality improves quickly and does not fluctuate after reaching the maximum value, and the minimum value of environmental quality is also higher than that when the above two EPI response strategies are used. In addition, the increased rate of environmental depreciation will improve environmental quality quickly, but reduce the level of economic development. The growth of environmental protection technology will promote both environmental quality improvements and economic development. Population growth will decrease environmental quality and economic development.

With the rapid economic growth and deteriorated ecological environment in last decades, China is attaching great importance to sustainable development and environmental protection investment. The relationship between environmental protection investment and economic growth in China has been studied empirically based on panel data from 31 provinces in this paper. According to the official statistics in China, the environmental protection investment is indicated as total investment in treatment of environmental pollution (EI), which mainly comes down to three categories, i.e. investment in urban environment infrastructure facilities (I1), investment in treatment of industrial pollution sources (I2) and investments in environment components for new construction projects (I3). The problem that how EI and I1, I2, I3 contribute to GDP in the East, Middle and West China respectively is discussed with econometric and statistic methods. The findings mainly include: 1) The environmental investment (EI) and economic growth (GDP) have positive correlation significantly, and every 1% increase in EI will be accompanied by almost 0.7% growth in GDP(0.855% for the East region, 0.608% for the Middle region and 0.666% for the West region). More supportive policies should be made to promote environmental investment. 2) Different parts of EI (i.e. I1, I2, I3) contribute to GDP distinctively in the East, Middle and West China. I3 contributes to GDP growth most in the East China, I1 contributes most in the Middle, and I2 contributes most in the West. It is advisable to invest more in environment components for new construction projects in eastern provinces, more in urban environment infrastructure facilities in the Middle China, and more in treatment of industrial pollution sources in Western China.

The implementation of the sustainable development concept determines economic growth while reducing the negative impact on the environment. To achieve this, investments in environmental protection are required, which, first of all, should be stimulated by the national environmental policy. The purpose of the article is to assess the impact of environmental policy instruments (charges for emission limits, charges for exceeding emission limits, fines, costs for eco-control, interbudgetary transfers, mandatory environmental insurance, regional tax incentives) on the development of regional investments in environmental protection in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation based on Federal State Statistics Service data. The research methods are panel regressions with fixed and random effects, the typology of regions by industry specialization based on the values of the localization coefficients, various types of analysis (structural, groupings). Our findings demonstrate that the Russian environmental policy pursued in Russia contributed to a slight increase in current environmental expenditures in the regions, primarily in the regions of agricultural specialization, but did not stimulate an increase in environmental investments in fixed assets. As a result, environmental quality indicators did not improve in the majority of Russian regions. Eco-control costs (in industrial regions), and charges for emission limits (in industrial and agro-industrial regions) have the greatest incentive to increase environmental costs. Fines, interbudgetary transfers, mandatory environmental insurance, regional tax incentives do not have a significant impact on environmental investment in fixed assets in Russian regions. To improve the efficiency of the state environmental policy the authors propose to increase the charge for exceeding emission limits and fines for environmental law violation, to revise the target nature of interbudgetary transfers in terms of stimulating environmental investments in fixed assets, and to implement pilot projects to introduce environmental policy instruments that comply with best international practices.

Prior literature suggests that the chief executive officer (CEO) plays a significant role in a firm's environmental performance or voluntary pro‐environmental behaviors; we extend this line of research to examine the effect of CEOs’ military service experience on firms’ investment in environmental protection. Drawing upon the insights of imprinting theory, we argue that military service experience may instill in CEOs pro‐environmental values such as duty, self‐discipline, self‐sacrifice, and sense of community, which motivate them to adopt pro‐environmental behaviors such as investing more resources in environmental protection. However, we argue that the effects of pro‐environmental values imprinted on CEOs through military service are likely to vary across regions. In regions where the market is more developed and the local value system has experienced greater exposure to the impact of foreign values, and in regions where firms are more concerned about profit, this effect is likely to be attenuated. An analysis of three waves of a nationwide survey of private firms in China using the Tobit regression model supports these predictions. This study makes a unique contribution to the existing literature by linking a firm's pro‐environmental behaviors (i.e., environmental protection investment) to its CEO’s experiences in early life (i.e., military service experience).

Do employees’ voices matter? Unionization and corporate environmental responsibility

Road to sustainable development of China: The pursuit of coordinated development between carbon emissions and the green economy

Ecological environment construction is an important strategic decision to achieve sustainable development. It is also a potential motive force to ensure longterm, steady and orderly development of the economy. In consideration of the fact that Shandong Province is the typical epitome of China in the new era, this paper is based on comprehensive investigations on the construction status of ecological environment in 17 cities of Shandong Province, and constructs an analysis framework of the ecological environment construction and economic growth. Using methodologies of AHP Evaluation Model, Co-Integration Analysis, Granger Causality Test and Error Correction Model etc., this paper makes the empirical studies on the relations between environmental protection investment, industrial pollution control, urban environment construction, natural resources conservation and the ecological environment construction in Shandong Province. Our research found that: the overall level of ecological environment construction in Shandong province has been constantly and steadily enhanced, among which the level of urban environment construction has risen the most, followed by environmental protection investment, industrial pollution control and natural resources conservation. Besides, there is a long-term equilibrium relation between the ecological environment construction and economic growth of Shandong Province, among which the bidirectional synergistic effect on the environmental protection investment and economic growth of eastern Shandong is the most remarkable. Therefore, this paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions, for example, implementing ecological development policies towards spatial differences, improving the ecological environment management, actively implementing environmental economic policies etc.