The impact of the European Emission Trading Scheme on multiple measures of economic performance*

The European emission trading scheme (EU ETS) has introduced a price for carbon and has thus led to an additional cost for companies that are regulated by the scheme. There is a growing body of empirical literature that investigates the effects of the EU ETS on firm economic performance. However, the results found to date are mixed. The objective of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the effect of the EU ETS on economic performance at the firm level. Differently from the previous literature, we test the effect of the EU ETS on a larger set of indicators of economic performance: value added, turnover, employment, investment, labour productivity, total factor productivity and markup. Moreover, we evaluate the extent to which the impact of the EU ETS differs depending on some observable features of firms. Our results, based on a large panel of European firms, provide a comprehensive picture of the economic impact of the EU ETS in its first and second phases of implementation. The evidence suggests that the EU ETS had a positive impact on the scale of treated firms, whereas it had a negative impact on scale-free aspects of economic performance

The Impact of Environmental Subsidy on Adoption and R&D Environmental Investment

This article is an empirical evaluation of the effects of a public environmental subsidy for technology adoption on environmental adoption (direct effect) and R&D investment (indirect effect), in a sample of Dutch non-service private companies over the 2006-2009 period. Combining information from surveys on the firm production and environmental costs, and by means of a continuous treatment matching approach, we are able to identify, for several subsidy amounts, whether an increase in such amounts may raise the levels or first differences in environmental technology adoption and R&D investment. We find negligible or significant crowding-out effects for both types of environmental investment, when controlling for firm invariant unobservables. Thus, our findings appear to suggest a serious re-modulation of the public policy tool under analysis, in terms of both the amounts provided and the firms targeted

Attosecond state-resolved carrier motion in quantum materials probed by soft x-ray XANES

Recent developments in attosecond technology led to table-top x-ray spectroscopy in the soft x-ray range, thus uniting the element- and state-specificity of core-level x-ray absorption spectroscopy with the time resolution to follow electronic dynamics in real-time. We describe recent work in attosecond technology and investigations into materials such as Si, SiO2, GaN, Al2O3, Ti, and TiO2, enabled by the convergence of these two capabilities. We showcase the state-of-the-art on isolated attosecond soft x-ray pulses for x-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy to observe the 3d-state dynamics of the semi-metal TiS2 with attosecond resolution at the Ti L-edge (460 eV). We describe how the element- and state-specificity at the transition metal L-edge of the quantum material allows us to unambiguously identify how and where the optical field influences charge carriers. This precision elucidates that the Ti:3d conduction band states are efficiently photo-doped to a density of 1.9 x 1021 cm 3. The light-field induces coherent motion of intra-band carriers across 38% of the first Brillouin zone. Lastly, we describe the prospects with such unambiguous real-time observation of carrier dynamics in specific bonding or anti-bonding states and speculate that such capability will bring unprecedented opportunities toward an engineered approach for designer materials with pre-defined properties and efficiency. Examples are composites of semiconductors and insulators like Si, Ge, SiO2, GaN, BN, and quantum materials like graphene, transition metal dichalcogens, or high-Tc superconductors like NbN or LaBaCuO. Exiting are prospects to scrutinize canonical questions in multi-body physics, such as whether the electrons or lattice trigger phase transitions

Práticas artísticas no ensino básico e secundário

As matérias-primas têm as marcas da sua origem, da sua localidade. Mas também é verdade que o centro de um processo educativo é não raramente desequilibrado pelas tensões hegemónicas e culturais. A reprodução do saber e da habilitação simbólica é uma das agências da hegemonia cultural. Perante os discursos hegemónicos, pós colonizadores, há propostas de resistência: a contextualização, o valor cultural local, a identidade. Entre as expressões dos vários países o tema é tratado em alguns dos 17 artigos que se apresentam neste 15º número da revista Matéria-Prima.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Environmental innovation, policy and economic performance

The objective of this thesis is to investigate three economic issues related to environmental innovation: evaluating how private investments in environmental innovation react to technological policy; testing whether environmental policy harms economic performance; analyzing whether and how energy-saving process innovation impacts economic performance. This thesis provides novel empirical evidence on these issues by means of econometric analysis on firm-level data. The results from this thesis show that firms' environmental investments react positively to the highest amounts of public subsidy. Environmental policy, contrarily to the expectations, enhances economic performance of firms. Lastly, energy-saving process innovation does not play a significant role in reducing production costs of firms. These results suggest that environmental and economic goals are not in trade-off at the current state and that energy saving is not an incentive per se. Thus, strengthening both environmental policy and technological policy for environmental innovation is recommended

The impact of the European Emission Trading Scheme on multiple measures of economic performance

The European emission trading scheme (EU ETS) has introduced a price for carbon, thus generating an additional cost for companies that are regulated by the scheme. The objective of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the effect of the EU ETS on firm-level economic performance. There is a growing body of empirical literature that investigates the effects of the EU ETS on firm economic performance, with mixed results. Differently from the previous literature, we test the effect of the EU ETS on a larger set of indicators of economic performance: employment, average wages, turnover, value added, markup, investment, labour productivity, total factor productivity and ROI. Our results, based on a large panel of European firms, provide a broad picture of the economic impact of the EU ETS in its first and second phases of implementation. Contrarily to the expectations, the EU ETS did not affect economic performance negatively. Results suggest that firms have reacted to the EU ETS by passing-through costs to their customers on the one hand and improving labour productivity on the other hand

USO DE COMPOSTAGEM DE CIGARRO CONTRABANDEADO NA CULTURA DE ALFACE AMERICANA

A procura por fontes alternativas de substratos na produção de hortaliças é crescente, o uso de compostagem de cigarro contrabandeado pode ser uma alternativa em sistemas de pequena escala. Este trabalho teve por objetivo avaliar o uso de composto orgânico derivado de cigarro contrabandeado, em diferentes dosagens, na produção de mudas de alface americana Gloriosa. O experimento foi conduzido no município de São José do Cedro/SC. O delineamento experimental foi o inteiramente casualizado, com três repetições, em esquema fatorial 5x2. Os tratamentos foram constituídos de cinco doses de composto orgânico derivado de cigarro contrabandeado com e sem adubação mineral, sendo: 0, 180, 360, 540 e 720 gramas/vaso de composto orgânico, com 0 ou 9 gramas de adubo mineral.. As variáveis agronômicas avaliadas foram: altura de plantas, diâmetro de plantas, comprimento de raízes, número de folhas, massa fresca da parte aérea e das raízes. As variáveis foram submetidas a análise de variância e as médias submetidas ao teste Tukey a 5%. O uso de composto orgânico contribuiu diretamente para o maior crescimento da cultura da alface tipo americana quando comparada ao tratamento sem adição de composto orgânico. O uso de fertilizante mineral não proporcionou aumento de produtividade