Foreign ownership, trade and the environmental actions of firms

Facundo Albornoz, Matthew A. Cole, Robert J.R. Elliott and Marco G. Ercolani Department of Economics, University of Birmingham, UK 3 August 2009 Abstract Using Argentinean firm-level data, we identify and quantify the factors that influence the environmental actions of Argentinean firms. We examine various aspects of a firm‟s environmental actions (EAs), including the range of EAs adopted, the motives for such adoption and the obstacles that hinder EA adoption. In each case we investigate the role played by firm-level characteristics, paying particular attention to foreign ownership, spillovers from foreign to domestic firms and networks between firms. We find that foreign firms are more likely to adopt EAs than domestic firms and environmental spillovers are more likely to move from one foreign firm to another than from foreign firms to domestic firms. Additionally, we find that foreign firms‟ motives for undertaking EAs and the obstacles that hinder them are often different to those experienced by domestic firms.