Environmental Expenditures Research Articles

Investigation on the causality relationship between environmental innovation and energy consumption: Empirical evidence from EU countries

Environmental innovations, investments, and expenses have been identified as an efficient and reliable way of addressing ecological issues. Nevertheless, how environmental innovations, investments, and expenses may influence the level of environmental pollution in European nations and whether the outcome may fluctuate among various environmental innovation indicators remain to be inspected. Therefore, this research is designed to empirically scrutinize the influence of environmental innovations, environmental investment, environmental expenditure, research and development (R&D) expenses, and foreign direct investment (FDI) on renewable and non-renewable energy in a sample of 15 European countries during the period from 2005 to 2018. To achieve this, we apply robust panel econometric estimation techniques. After testing the stationary property of the series, the findings of the Pedroni cointegration test disclose the presence of a long-run stable connection among the series. The empirical results from the ARDL, FMOLS and DOLS regression show that the impact of environmental innovations, environmental expenditure, R&D expenses, and FDI help to reduce overall non-renewable energy and promote renewable energy. In contrast, environmental investment significantly increases non-renewable energy and diminishes renewable energy usage. Moreover, the findings of Dumitrescu and Hurlin's tests discover a unidirectional causality running from non-renewables and renewables towards environmental investment, environmental expenditure, and FDI. Additionally, bi-directional causality is found between environmental innovations R&D, with both non-renewable and renewable energy utilization. Furthermore, we summarize by arguing that the efforts toward efficient and sustainable use of energy by reducing the combustion of non-renewable energy sources should support modern and innovative strategies by ensuring the transformation of non-renewables with renewable energy sources.

Environmental expenditure, policy stringency and green economic growth: evidence from OECD countries

ABSTRACT This study explores the link between environmental policy stringency and spending and the growth of environmental GDP and productivity. Using the Pooled Mean Group Autoregressive Distributed Lag model, we examine the short- and long-term effectiveness of environmental policy stringency and environmental spending on pollution-adjusted GDP and productivity growth for a sample of OECD nations. Although these policies and their outcomes differ considerably from country to country, our findings reveal that governments’ expenditure on environmental protection emerges as a significantly stimulatory factor of national output in the short-term. Our long-run results show that both tighter environmental policies and environmental expenditure can slow down ‘green’ GDP and productivity growth over time with policy stringencies having a weaker impact. Overall, our findings do not support the Porter Hypothesis, but rather confirm the widely held view that these policies may hinder economic activity and growth.

FINANCIAL PROVISION MANAGEMENT FOR THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION OF THE TRANSBORDER REGION

The aim of the article is to conduct a comparative analysis of the Volyn region (Ukraine) and Lublin Voivodeship (Republic of Poland) environmental protection financing. As well as to determine the level of partnership participation in the financing of the environmental measures within the cross-border region. The system of financial support for environmental protection in the cross-border region is explored in the article. The content of the transboundary natural resources management mechanism is considered. The main sources of funding for environmental measures in the Volyn region and Lublin Voivodeship are identified. A comparative analysis of the dynamics and structure of current costs spent and capital investments for the environmental protection of the Volyn region and Lublin Voivodeship is carried out. It is determined that the structure of environmental protection expenditures within the cross-border region is dominated by costs spent on the protection of water resources, air, waste management, and biodiversity conservation. Linear trend models were built for the amount of funding in Volyn Oblast and Lublin Voivodeship using the trend forecasting methodology. The forecast of the dynamics of the environmental protection financing within the cross-border region for 2022-2023 is determined by the method of extrapolation.Determination of the degree of cooperation in the field of transboundary natural resources management and the division of responsibilities between its key players are important aspects of the financial model’s effectiveness. The degree of cooperation in the field of transboundary natural resources management, including independent control, dialogue, cooperation, coordination mechanisms and joint management is revealed in the article. It has been proved that the cross-border relations within the Volyn region and the Lublin Voivodeship are at the level of cooperation. But it is noted that efficiency will be achieved only at the level of joint cross-border management in this area. The main tools of integrated management of financial support for environmental protection are identified. The distribution of partnership participation in the financing of environmental measures is proposed depending on their location in the border areas of Volyn region and Lublin Voivodeship.

Convolutional Neural Network and Support Vector Machine for Prediction of Damage Intensity to Multi-Storey Prefabricated RC Buildings

This paper presents the results of a comparative analysis of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) models created for the prediction of the extent and intensity of damage caused to multi-storey reinforced concrete (RC) buildings. The research was conducted on a group of residential buildings, which were subjected to mining impacts in the form of surface deformations and rock mass tremors during their technical life cycle. Damage to buildings poses a significant threat to the safety of the structure and the serviceability of the buildings. They are often the cause of breaks in thermal insulation, which leads to excessive consumption of thermal energy used for space heating, which in turn contributes to over-emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere. Therefore, this problem is important, not only from a technical dimension, but also includes social, economic, and environmental aspects, which allows it to be classified as an issue of sustainable development in the building industry. As a result of the conducted analysis, among the CNN models, the highest level of classification accuracy was the model obtained using the ADAM (derived from adaptive moment estimation) algorithm, which was also characterized by a very high level of generalization, obtaining 80.35% correctly classified patterns for the training set and 80.52% for the test set. However, its accuracy level was slightly lower than that of the SVM model (85.15% for the training set and 84.42% for the test set), in which Bayesian optimization was used to determine the parameters. The analysis confirmed the effectiveness of the adopted methodology for predicting the extent and intensity of damage. The developed tool can support the optimization of building maintenance management, resulting in reduced economic and environmental expenditures for renovations.

Stability and Bifurcation Analysis of an Environmental Protection Model with Two Delays

This paper is devoted to studying an environmental protection model with two delays. The model considers the interactions among visitors [Formula: see text], environmental resource [Formula: see text], and capital stock [Formula: see text] in protected areas. The tourism user fees obtained from visitors are partly used as an environmental expenditure and partly as the increment of capital stock. The spread delay [Formula: see text] and the protection delay [Formula: see text] are introduced. The stability switching cures for the two delays are used to investigate the stability of the equilibrium and the occurrence of Hopf bifurcation. The bifurcating directions are determined. Numerical simulations are given to illustrate the results. In this model, the quality of the environmental resource is related closely to the environmental expenditure, where the more the environmental expenditure, the better the quality of the environmental resource. This result will be useful for the protection of the protected areas.

Do political connections foster or hamper firm environmental investment?

Extant studies of environmental investment determinants have not distinguished between different types of political connections. This study tries to close this gap by employing an extensive dataset based on the four-yearly Chinese Private Enterprises Survey conducted between 2006 and 2012. The central question in this paper asks whether different political connections (ascribed vs. achieved) are fostering or hindering environmental protection expenditures in private enterprises. The results show that achieved political connections serve as binds of promoting firm environmental investment while ascribed political connections act as buffers, hampering firm environmental expenditures. The moderating roles of environmental regulation and innovation capability demonstrate heterogeneous effects: environmental regulation stringency strengthens the positive impact of achieved political connections only. In contrast, innovation capability enhances the negative impact of ascribed political connections.

PSO-Based ANN for Studying on Carrying Capacity of Iron Ore Resources-Economy-Environment in Southern Shaanxi, China

The southern Shaanxi Province, China, has abundant iron ore resources due to local ideal metallogenic conditions. The development and utilization of iron ore resources and other related industries serve as important pillars of the regional economy. In this paper, principals and methodology of system dynamics are adopted to develop a system model of interactions of development and utilization of mineral resources, social economy, and ecological environment, using the iron ore reserves in the southern Shaanxi region as a resource base, the regional GDP as a benchmark of regional economic development, and the environmental treatment expenditure as the measurement of the regional environmental protection efforts. The model is performed based on an optimized neural network by the particle swarm optimization algorithm. Through setting variables and parameters for the system and model simulation as well as comparative research, this paper analyzes the interconnectivity and interaction of the three subsystems and explores associated relationships among mineral resources, social economy, and environmental carrying capacity in the southern Shaanxi region. In addition, the present study also proposes advice on the development and utilization of iron ore resources, ecological protection, and high-quality development of the economy in the southern Shaanxi region based on the research results.

Investigating the role of green transport, environmental taxes and expenditures in mitigating the transport CO2 emissions

ABSTRACT Transportation sector is considered a major contributor to the release of the carbon emissions in the atmosphere. The present research explores the effect of traffic, environmental taxes and expenditures on transport-related carbon emissions. We apply a cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lags estimator for short- and long-run estimates by using panel data for 35 OECD countries. We demonstrate traffic increase transport-related carbon emissions by 14.65% on average. Transport-related carbon emissions will rise by 1.5% over the near term as a result of the combined effect rail and road-vehicles, and energy consumption. Environmental expenditures and green transportation, on the other hand, will cut transportation emissions by 21.7% and 45.20% in the short and long runs, respectively. Furthermore, the findings reveal an inverted u-shaped link between transportation-related carbon emissions and consumption. Based on real-world evidence, this study advises that some countries reduce traffic while simultaneously increasing spending on the development of environmentally friendly transportation options.

The Impact of Emissions Trading Program on the Labor Demand of Enterprises: Evidence From China

The emissions trading program (ETP) is an effective means to fight environmental pollution. However, it may also spur the increase of enterprise costs, which affects employment and economic development. Adopting a difference-in-differences method and exploiting China’s emissions trading policy in 2007 as a quasi-natural experiment, we investigate the impact of the ETP on firms’ labor demand and the mechanism facilitating this effect. The results show that the ETP significantly reduces firms’ labor demand. The conclusion remains robust after using an instrumental variable to alleviate the possible endogeneity problem. Mechanism analysis indicates that the ETP reduces firms’ labor demand via increasing firms’ environmental expenditure and reducing profits. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the ETP significantly reduces the labor demand of SO2 emitting firms and heavy polluting firms, while having no significant impact on the labor demand of non-SO2 emitting firms and non-heavy polluting firms. This negative impact is more prominent for resource-based cities and old industrial base cities. This paper provides empirical evidence and policy implications for implementing the ETP in developing countries.

Environmental Responsibility: An Emerging Paradigm of Indian Public Sector -A Case Study

Corporate Environmental Responsibility is relatively a new concept which includes different ideas, actions, strategies and ideologies. The concept clearly identifies and explains the role played by the corporations in the current environmental crisis. Its basic premise is that a corporation engages in environmentally beneficial actions to reduce society’s burden on our ecosystem and promote environmental sustainability. Corporate Environmental Responsibility is about managing the use of natural resources in the most effective and efficient manner in order to reduce environmental impacts and financial costs. This study is pertaining to the corporate Environmental responsibilities as a part of corporate social responsibilities of Indian Oil Corporations. It discusses on the amount of direct and indirect energy consumption and CO2 emission created and its responsibilities towards the society are analyzed.The study found that, total Environmental Expenditure is increasing: for Corporate Social Responsibility Expenditure was Rupees 460.37 crore in that Rs.252.48 was spent for Covid 19 (2% of average Net Profit as per Section 135(5)), health and sanitation was Rupees 29.54 crores and for Swatch Bharat was Rs.16.38 crores, It is a welcoming feature and environmental concern of Indian Oil Corporation, otherwise Corporate Social Responsibility.

Effect of economic development, income inequality, transportation, and environmental expenditures on transport emissions: evidence from OECD countries

Environmental quality has been pondered as an essential aspect of sustainable development across the global economies. Several factors such as economic development, income inequality, transportation, and environmental expenditures drastically influence environmental quality. More specifically, the transport sector is a major contributor to carbon emissions which deteriorate the environmental quality. Therefore, this study investigates whether economic development, transportation, environmental expenditures, and income inequality affect transport-carbon emissions for the OECD countries. Furthermore, panel time-series data period from 2000 to 2020 and cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag method are used for transport-oriented environmental examination. Results demonstrate that transportation upsurges transport-carbon emission level by 46.45% on average. Moreover, the joint effect of economic development and environmental taxes significantly reduces transport-carbon emissions by 14.70%. Findings further suggest that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between economic development and transport emission. Besides, income inequality, environmental expenditures, and green transportation are negatively associated with the coefficient of transport-carbon emissions. More interestingly, income inequality is negatively correlated with transport-carbon emissions across the sample countries. Furthermore, the joint effect of income inequality and economic development increases the emission level released by the transport sector. Thus, this research recommends some policies: countries should control traffic movements and increase environmental expenditures, and produce green transport vehicles to tackle environmental issues.

Stringent environmental regulation and capital structure: The effect of NEPL on deleveraging the high polluting firms

This paper studies the impact of stringent environmental regulation on the financial behavior of firms. Using panel data of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2018, we take the implementation of the new environmental protection law (NEPL) in 2015 as a quasi-natural experiment and identify its impact on the deleveraging of high polluting firms. The possible reason is that the nationwide legal construction by NEPL will set the tone of environmental governance for a long time in the future. Considering the environmental legitimacy and sustainable development, firms change their strategies and reduce their short-sighted behaviors, which are reflected in the changes in investment and financing. On the one hand, banks cut down loans to high polluting firms with environmental risks and increase their financing costs, thereby reducing leverage. On the other hand, firms reduce fixed asset investment and increase R&D and environmental expenditures under the formal supervision of the government and unformal supervision of other stakeholders, realizing deleveraging and green transformation. Considering the heterogeneity of firms, NEPL has a greater effect on state-owned firms, small-scale firms, technology-intensive firms, firms without political connections, high financing constraints firms, and firms in the decline stage. This study identifies the effectiveness of environmental governance on the deleveraging of high polluting firms for lowering financial risks for the first time. Our empirical evidence strongly supports that China's new environmental protection law can realize a win-win situation of the environment and economy.

Corporate environmental information disclosure and investor response: Evidence from China's capital market

This paper aims at analyzing the impact of corporate environmental information disclosure from the perspective of investors. To that end, we have collected environmental information disclosure data of all Chinese listed companies from 2004 to 2020 and controlled the impacts of annual reports on investor response. We apply the Fama-French five-factor model to calculate the accumulative abnormal returns of stocks during the event window period. Our results suggest that environmental information disclosure can have a significant negative response among investors when we take the impacts of annual reports into consideration. Moreover, we find that heavy-polluting companies and companies with high institutional shareholding are more likely to have negative reactions from investors. Notably, the negative response is found significant after the Ambient Air Quality Standard was revised in 2012. Furthermore, high environmental expenditure and strict environmental regulation will result in negative investor responses, while the political connection can alleviate the negative impacts of environmental information disclosure. The results remain robust in different ways. The findings suggest that listed companies may lack the incentive to engage in environmental management and are reluctant to disclose environmental information. Consequently, the government should formulate a mandatory disclosure policy and provide administrative support to environmental-friendly companies. Besides, companies should improve innovation technology to cut down environmental costs. Meanwhile, investors should be aware of the importance of corporate environmental behaviors and realize the long-term benefits of environmental management of listed companies.

Nexus Between Economic Efficiency, Healthcare, and Environmental Expenditures: A Perspective of BRI Countries.

Public health and the environment are the most essential pillars, and play a vital role in the economy. In order to better public health, the economic and environmental atmosphere must be stable and clean, respectively. Thus, this paper emphasizes on nexus between economic, public health, and the environment. Therefore, the objective of this paper is whether healthcare and environmental expenditures affect economic efficiency and vice versa. So, this study evaluates the performance of the country's economic efficiency and investigates the effect of healthcare and environmental expenditures for 62 Belt and Road Initiative countries for the period from 1996 to 2020. Suitable input-output variables are employed under the framework of DEA-window and Malmquist Index Productivity, and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). In addition, this study estimates the relationship between economic efficiency, healthcare, and environmental expenditures by fixed and random effects models. Therefore, the analytical outcomes reveal that countries are economically efficient. On the contrary, SFA estimation concludes that countries are found to be inefficient, because higher variation is exists in efficiency change compared to technological efficiency change and total factor productivity change on average. In addition, it is worth notable that healthcare and environmental expenditures improve the country's economic efficiency. Furthermore, public health is also influenced by economic efficiency. Thus, this study suggests that countries should better utilize given resources and invest a specific portion of national income in order to improve economic efficiency.

ВИДАТКИ МІСЦЕВИХ БЮДЖЕТІВ НА ОХОРОНУ НАВКОЛИШНЬОГО СЕРЕДОВИЩА В УКРАЇНІ В УМОВАХ ФІСКАЛЬНОЇ ДЕЦЕНТРАЛІЗАЦІЇ

In the article the state, trends and features of financing environmental measures by local budgets in Ukraine in order to justify the possibility of increasing the effectiveness of local communities expenditures on environmental protection were investigated. To this end, an analysis of local government expenditures, including budget environmental programs, the structure and dynamics of environmental tax revenues to the general and special funds of state and local budgets from 2010 through 2020 were analyzed. The distribution of environmental expenditures between state and local budgets, the financing mechanism for environmental protection and the mechanism of providing the local environmental fund have been studied. According to the results of the analysis, it was shown that in the conditions of decentralization, the volume of local financing of environmental measures has increased. However, a significant part (over 50%) of environmental funds was directed to non-priority goals and activities. The share of expenditures of the Environmental Protection Fund for the implementation of definitely environmental measures was low. This does not contribute to solving current environmental problems and does not increase the capacity of local budgets in terms of environmental expenditures. Significant (over 60%) centralization of the environmental tax revenues in the state budget creates unfavorable conditions for the ecological sustainability of some regions. It was established that the main function of the environmental tax – compensatory – is not fully fulfilled. The environmental tax was mainly directed to the implementation of the general functions of the state and territorial communities. In order to increase the efficiency of local budget expenditures on environmental protection, it is necessary to develop criteria for assessing the impact of environmental measures, normative definition of mandatory environmental effects in budget programs and strengthen state financial control over the targeted use of local budget funds.

The Role of Public Spending in CO2 Emissions Reduction in Polish Regions: An LMDI Decomposition Approach

Global climate change and air pollution are critical environmental problems in the modern world. Therefore, the reduction of CO2 emissions has long been a crucial challenge for individual countries. In this area, numerous technological, legal, and economic solutions are used. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of public spending on the level of CO2 emissions in Polish regions. The study uses the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method, proposing a unique proprietary set of factors that influence the level of CO2 emissions. The results of the study confirm that public expenditure contributes to reducing CO2 emissions at the regional level, while environmental expenditure is counterproductive. This tendency is observed mainly in regions with a high level of socioeconomic development, higher energy consumption, and high carbon emissions. The failure of environmental spending to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in Polish regions is explained by the “green paradox” hypothesis.

Programming of obesity and pediatric metabolic syndromes: a review in light of epigenetic modulation

Obesity is a multifactorial health problem characterized by the excessive accumulation of fat in the body and affects approximately 338 million children and adolescents worldwide. For this reason, this study consisted of a literature review to investigate how the causes and treatments of pediatric obesity are being addressed in light of epigenetic modulation as a factor in metabolic programming. For this, preferentially original articles published in English between the years 2017 to 2021 in the PubMed and Scholar Google databases were searched using the epigenetics descriptors; epigenetic modulation; child obesity; metabolic syndrome, combined with each other. A total of 54,000 articles were returned to searches in PubMed and 16,107,000 in Scholar Google. Fewer than 500 studies jointly addressed epigenetics and aspects of obesity or metabolic syndromes in childhood. Only 14 works matched the search criteria. The most discussed epigenetic mechanism in the literature is DNA methylation, whose rates observed mainly in CpG islands of promoter regions in several genes contribute to the prevention and early diagnosis of obesity and other pediatric comorbidities even before birth, based on the correlation between the epigenetic marks, maternal and paternal health and anthropometric indices. Although experimental studies on infant metabolic programming are scarce, existing knowledge suggests that environmental, nutritional, and energy expenditure changes are capable of modulating the epigenome and reversing marks that induce susceptibility to metabolic comorbidities.

Efficiency of Environmental Protection Expenditures in EU Countries

Environmental protection policy is a widely discussed issue in scientific works. However, special attention should be also paid to the effectiveness of expenditures on environmental protection, and this is the main goal of this paper. The countries of the European Union were selected for this analysis due to the fact that, in recent years, this region has become an informal world leader with respect to the implementation of policy measures in the field of environmental protection. For that reason, the data envelopment analysis methodology was used, which allows the calculation of input-output efficiency for the years 2005–2015. The analysis shows that, among the 30 analyzed countries, the most effective in environmental protection actions is Finland. The hypothesis that higher environmental protection expenditures does not result in better environmental results has been confirmed. Our analysis confirmed the problem of the deteriorating efficiency of environmental expenditures across the selected European Union Member States, caused by increases in spending. This research may contribute to the discussion on environmental protection policy design and its assessment, as well as environmental policy results measurement.

Environmental protection and happiness: A long-run relationship in Europe

The possible linkage between environmental regulation and happiness represents a relatively new and little explored issue. This study wants to contribute to this recent stream of research by examining the long-run relationship between environmental protection expenditure and happiness in the case of European countries. The analysis draws both on micro data from Veenhoven's (2013) World Database of Happiness and macro data of 19 European countries observed during the period 1997–2019. A dynamic panel heterogeneity analysis through an autoregressive distributed lag model is applied, using three different estimators: the dynamic fixed effect, the mean group and the pooled mean group estimators. In order to account for cross-sectional dependence of the panel, Westerlund cointegration tests are also used. Dynamic fixed effect estimations highlight the existence of a direct link between happiness and environmental protection expenditure in the long run while the unemployment rate negatively affects happiness both in the short and in the long run. Our analysis recommends governments to include environmental expenditure among possible instruments to improve domestic well-being, highlighting the importance of the interplay between environmental quality and life satisfaction. The last aspect is crucial when implementing national and European policy measures to promote sustainable development.

EFFECT OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ON INVESTMENT EFFICIENCY OF QUOTED OIL AND GAS FIRMS IN NIGERIA

This study examined effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on investment efficiency of quoted oil and gas firms in Nigeria. The study employed Ex post facto research design. The sample size of seven (7) oil and gas firms was derived from the population of the quoted twelve (12) oil and gas firms in Nigeria. Judgmental approach was employed during the sampling procedure. The study used secondary data sourced from the annual reports of the quoted oil and gas firms in Nigeria Stock Exchange fact books of official lists covering a ten-year period (2010-2019). The study employed Multiple Regression Model as the technique of data analysis with the aid of SPSS 23 statistical software. Analysis of findings showed that CSR charitable donation expenditure, CSR expenditure on education and CSR societal expenditure reveal significant relationship with investment efficiency of oil and gas firms in Nigeria. Nevertheless, CSR health expenditure and CSR environmental expenditure show insignificant effect on investment efficiency of oil and gas firms in Nigeria. The study also reveals that there is significant relationship between CSR sports expenditure and investment efficiency of oil and gas firms in Nigeria. With respect to the findings, the study recommends that the oil and gas firms should boost and monitor their CSR charitable donation expenditure, CSR on health expenditures, CSR environmental and CSR sport expenditures and observe them closely since they reveal negative effect. The study also recommends that CSR expenditure on education and CSR societal expenditure should be upheld and sustained since they reveal significant positive effect on investment efficiency of oil and gas firms in Nigeria.