Environment

Optimal environmental policy aims at equalizing benefits and costs of improving environmental quality. While the benefits generally accrue in the form of increased health, worker productivity, quality of life, and amenity values, the costs that environmental regulations might impose on the labor market are mostly borne through impacts on production, employment, and labor compensation. The articles illustrate how successful policy development requires information on the connection between environmental regulations, labor markets, and industrial activity.

  • Using natural resource shocks to study economic behavior

    Natural resource shocks can help studying how low-skilled men respond to changes in labor market conditions

    Dan A. Black, December 2019
    In the context of growing worldwide inequality, it is important to know what happens when the demand for low-skilled workers changes. Because natural resource shocks are global in nature, but have highly localized impacts on labor prospects in resource extraction areas, they offer a unique opportunity to evaluate low-skilled men's behavior when faced with extreme variations in local labor market conditions. This situation can be utilized to evaluate a broad range of outcomes, from education and income, to marital and fertility status, to voting behavior.
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  • The impact of energy booms on local workers

    Energy booms create widespread short-term benefits for local workers, but appropriate policy requires consideration of a broad array of factors

    Grant D. Jacobsen, November 2019
    One of the primary considerations in policy debates related to energy development is the projected effect of resource extraction on local workers. These debates have become more common in recent years because technological progress has enabled the extraction of unconventional energy sources, such as shale gas and oil, spurring rapid development in many areas. It is thus crucial to discuss the empirical evidence on the effect of “energy booms” on local workers, considering both the potential short- and long-term impacts, and the implications of this evidence for public policy.
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  • Temperature, productivity, and income

    Rising temperatures due to climate change could dampen productivity growth for decades

    Olivier Deschenes, February 2023
    Climate change is rapidly deteriorating environmental conditions through droughts and floods, hurricanes, wildfires, rising temperatures, and more frequent and longer heatwaves. A growing literature has shown how higher temperatures reduce worker productivity and economic output. These effects are more pronounced in poorer countries and in climate-exposed economic sectors like agriculture, construction, and manufacturing. The development of new technologies that mitigate exposure to heat among workers, combined with better temperature control in the workplace, will be essential to reduce the economic burden of climate change.
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  • Impacts of regulation on eco-innovation and job creation Updated

    Do regulation-induced environmental innovations affect employment?

    Jens Horbach, November 2020
    New environmental technologies (environmental/eco-innovations) are often regarded as potential job creators—in addition to their positive effects on the environment. Environmental regulation may induce innovations that are accompanied by positive growth and employment effects. Recent empirical analyses show that the introduction of cleaner process innovations, rather than product-based ones, may also lead to higher employment. The rationale is that cleaner technologies lead to cost savings, which helps to improve firms’ competitiveness, thereby inducing positive effects on their market shares.
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  • Environmental regulations and labor markets Updated

    Balancing the benefits of environmental regulations for everyone and the costs to workers and firms

    Olivier Deschenes, November 2018
    Environmental regulations such as air quality standards can lead to notable improvements in ambient air quality and to related health benefits. But they impose additional production costs on firms and may reduce productivity, earnings, and employment, especially in sectors exposed to trade and intensive in labor and energy. Growing empirical evidence suggests that the benefits are likely to outweigh the costs.
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  • Environmental regulations and business decisions

    Environmental regulations impose costs on firms, affecting productivity and location but providing significant health benefits

    Wayne B. Gray, September 2015
    Environmental regulations raise production costs at regulated firms, though in most cases the costs are only a small fraction of a firm’s total costs. Productivity tends to fall, and firms may shift new investment and production to locations with less stringent regulation. However, environmental regulations have had enormous benefits in terms of lives saved and illnesses averted, especially through reductions in airborne particulates. The potential health gains may be even greater in developing countries, where pollution levels are high. The benefits to society from environmental regulation hence appear to be much larger than the costs of compliance.
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  • Employment effects of green energy policies Updated

    Does a switch in energy policy toward more renewable sources create or destroy jobs in an industrial country?

    Nico Pestel, December 2019
    Many industrial countries are pursuing so-called green energy policies, which typically imply the replacement of conventional fossil fuel power plants with renewable sources. Such a policy shift may affect employment in different ways. On the one hand, it could create new and additional “green jobs” in the renewables sector; on the other hand, it could crowd out employment in other sectors. An additional consideration is the potential increase in energy prices, which has the potential to stifle labor demand in energy-intensive sectors and reduce the purchasing power of private households.
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