The Impact Of Regulation On Industrial Innovation

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1979-06 edition. Excerpt: ...also pointed out that the direct regulatory control procedures used by the EPA in water (and air) pollution do not provide strong positive incentives for firms to develop pollution-reducing technological advances. Rather, the current laws tend instead to channel the firm's efforts toward those approaches that have been sanctioned by regulatory authorities and that will avoid trouble in gaining their approval. Charles Schultze of the CEA has pointed out that laws that mandate regulatory authorities to impose the "best available technology" operate as a strong deterrent to experimentation with new techniques and technologies. He asks in this regard, "will firms in polluting industries sponsor research or undertake experimentation to develop a new means of reducing pollution still further if its very availability will generate new and more stringent regulations?" (Schultze, 1977, p. 53). The point, of course, is not that environmental legislation has not created a substantial demand for new pollution-control technologies. There is no question that this legislation has accelerated the development of numerous new technologies for pollution control. There are even instances in which innovation in pollution-control equipment has had positive spillover effects on firm efficiency and profitability as well as yielding broader social gains. But there is also ample evidence from which we conclude that the centralized mode of direct regulatory controls used in this country is not the best approach for encouraging such pollution-reducing technologies. The experiences in regulating air pollution from auto emissions (discussed below) provides a particularly good case illustration of this point. In place of the present centralized bureaucratic system...

What role should governments play in protecting the environment and controlling the environmental impacts of industry? Do regulations benefit the environment? And how do they affect industrial innovation? Since the early 1970s, regulations have been used to coerce producers of goods and services into internalizing the environmental costs of production. These efforts have often faced opposition on practical and ideological grounds. Beginning in the 1980s, there has been a movement toward liberalization, coupled with the continued failure of the market to protect the environment as a public good. As a result, private and public sector interests have been debating the appropriate role of governments in protecting and improving the environment and controlling the environmental impact of industry. Using case studies from numerous countries, this book examines political and industrial trends and the responses to these challenges. The authors conclude that the complexities of environmental and economic relationships disallow universal solutions, and they stress the need for context-specific perspectives on the role of regulatory measures in environmental innovation.

This book contends that various forms of regulation have costs as well as benefits and it examines the impact of government regulation on the innovativeness of ’monopolies’ - in this book meaning firms with the power to affect market price. The government regulation analyzed in this case is limited to rate-of-return regulation. Using theoretical models such as the Averch-Johnson model and a two-stage Nash equilibrium model, this volume examines whether regulated monopolies engage in more or less technological innovation than unregulated monopolies. Furthermore, if the unregulated (or less regulated) monopolies do engage in more research and development than regulated ones, it questions whether social welfare would be greater with the former. Using a case study of ten privately-owned electric utilities in the State of Texas, USA, it then tests out the general propositions brought forward by the theoretical modelling and finally makes its conclusions taking into consideration both theoretical and empirical findings.

Does regulation affect the pace and nature of innovation and if so, by how much? We build a tractable and quantifiable endogenous growth model with size-contingent regulations. We apply this to population administrative firm panel data from France, where many labor regulations apply to firms with 50 or more employees. Nonparametrically, we find that there is a sharp fall in the fraction of innovating firms just to the left of the regulatory threshold. Further, a dynamic analysis shows a sharp reduction in the firm's innovation response to exogenous demand shocks for firms just below the regulatory threshold. We then quantitatively fit the parameters of the model to the data, finding that innovation at the macro level is about 5.4% lower due to the regulation, a 2.2% consumption equivalent welfare loss. Four-fifths of this loss is due to lower innovation intensity per firm rather than just a misallocation towards smaller firms and lower entry. We generalize the theory to allow for changes in the direction of R&D, and find that regulation's negative effects only matter for incremental innovation (as measured by citations and text-based measures of novelty). A more regulated economy may have less innovation, but when firms do innovate they tend to "swing for the fence" with more radical (and labor saving) breakthroughs.

Arguing that the performance of industrial environmental regulation is determined by the level and nature of the innovation it stimulates, this text aims to analyze the influence of different structures and styles of implementation on innovation in regulated companies. Further aims include: examining the economic and environmental performance of different forms of innovation developed and applied by industry in response to regulation; describing the conditions under which industrial environmental regulation can be improved; outlining the implementation approaches required for regulated companies to overcome barriers which prevent them from exploiting the economic and environmental potential of particular forms of innovation; demonstrating how technological and organizational change could lead to lower costs and higher benefits from regulatory compliance; and putting forward to governments and industry proposals to improve the relationship between environmental protection and industrial competitiveness.

Americans praise medical technology for saving lives and improving health. Yet, new technology is often cited as a key factor in skyrocketing medical costs. This volume, second in the Medical Innovation at the Crossroads series, examines how economic incentives for innovation are changing and what that means for the future of health care. Up-to-date with a wide variety of examples and case studies, this book explores how payment, patent, and regulatory policiesâ€"as well as the involvement of numerous government agenciesâ€"affect the introduction and use of new pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and surgical procedures. The volume also includes detailed comparisons of policies and patterns of technological innovation in Western Europe and Japan. This fact-filled and practical book will be of interest to economists, policymakers, health administrators, health care practitioners, and the concerned public.