Robert J R Elliott

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• PhD (University of Nottingham)
• Professor at University of Birmingham

Electric vehicles are increasingly being adopted in Great Britain and other parts of the world, driven by the perception that they offer a cost-effective alternative to internal combustion engine vehicles while reducing emissions. However, a key element that underpins this perception is the longevity of electric vehicles, which remains relatively u...

The Great Fire of 1910 in the northwestern United States burnt more than 1.2 million hectares in just two days and stands as one of the largest wildfires ever recorded. While it is known for having led to the introduction of a rigorous fire suppression regime that lasted for much of the twentieth century, it also generated a considerable amount of...

This article builds on China’s rich recorded history to present a newly constructed dataset of environmental events at the county-level for the period 1368 to 1911. Essential to the dataset construction is the use of recently developed AI techniques, including new optical character recognition, lexical analysis based on machine learning, and word f...

One of the main challenges of the current energy transition is how countries can deliver a low-carbon future while at the same time ensuring they can meet an ever growing demand for energy. This paper investigates how the spatial distribution of endowments of energy resources influences the location of firms and their subsequent exports. Employing...

The Great Fire of 1910 in the northwestern United States burnt more than 1.2 million hectares in just two days and stands as one of the largest wildfires ever recorded. It led to the introduction of a rigorous fire suppression regime that lasted for much of the 20th century and is therefore the last extreme wildfire event before this paradigm shift...

We apply a two-step data driven approach to determine the causal impact of the clean air zone (CAZ) policy on air quality in Birmingham, UK. Levels of NO2, NOx and PM2.5 before and after CAZ implementation were collected from automatic air quality monitoring sites both within and outside the CAZ. We apply a unique combination of two recent methods:...

We estimate the impact of wildfires on the growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) and employment of regional economies in Southern Europe from 2011 to 2018. To this end we match Eurostat economic data with geospatial burned area perimeters based on satellite imagery for 233 Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) 3 level region...

The market dynamics, and their impact on a future circular economy for lithium-ion batteries (LIB), are presented in this roadmap, with safety as an integral consideration throughout the life cycle. At the point of end-of-life, there is a range of potential options – remanufacturing, reuse and recycling. Diagnostics play a significant role in evalu...

The electrification of the transport sector is a critical part of the net-zero transition. The mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) powered by lithium-ion batteries in the coming decade will inevitably lead to a large amount of battery waste, which needs handling in a safe and environmentally friendly manner. Battery recycling is a sustainable...

Heating is a major source of air pollution. To improve air quality, a range of clean heating polices were implemented in China over the past decade. Here, we evaluated the impacts of winter heating and clean heating polices on air quality in China using a novel, observation-based causal inference approach. During 2015-2021, winter heating causally...

Crop yield improvement during the last decades has relied on increasing the ratio of the economic organ to the total aboveground biomass, known as the harvest index (HI). In most crop models, HI is set as a parameter; this empirical approach does not consider that HI not only depends on plant genotype, but is also affected by the environment. An al...

We estimate the country‐level risk of extreme wildfires defined by burned area (BA) for Mediterranean Europe and carry out a cross‐country comparison. To this end, we avail of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) geospatial data from 2006 to 2019 to perform an extreme value analysis. More specifically, we apply a point process charac...

The emergence of a mass market for Electric vehicles (EVs) offers considerable development opportunities for countries that have abundant resources of Cobalt, Nickel, Lithium, Copper, Aluminium, and Manganese. Not surprisingly, developing countries have proposed ambitious plans to expand their domestic production of these raw materials. However, an...

Rapid electrification of the transport system will generate substantial volumes of Lithium-ion-battery (LiB) waste as batteries reach their end-of-life. Much attention focuses on the recycling processes, neglecting a broader systemic view that considers the concentration of the costs and impacts associated with logistics and transportation. This pa...

The creation of a satellite rapid alert programme (DETER-A) in 2004 was a cornerstone of the Brazilian government's strategy to reduce deforestation. This programme allowed authorities to detect and respond rapidly to periods of deforestation. Due to the fact that the policy instrument was based on multispectral remote radar, weather-related obstac...

Focusing on Japan over the period 1988–2013, this paper provides the first test of the extent to which pollution offshoring has occurred for this major industrial economy. In so doing, we identify whether the composition of domestic production, imports, overall trade patterns and overseas outsourcing has become more or less pollution intensive. We...

We estimate the impact of power outages on firm performance using a hydro-instrumental variable strategy which integrates a river flow with a hydropower generation model and an electricity-grid-based distance interpolation technique. Comparing World Bank Enterprise Surveys in 2005 and 2015 for Vietnam, we find that despite considerable economic pro...

Economically viable electric vehicle lithium-ion battery recycling is increasingly needed; however routes to profitability are still unclear. We present a comprehensive, holistic techno-economic model as a framework to directly compare recycling locations and processes, providing a key tool for recycling cost optimization in an international batter...

The COVID-19 lockdowns led to major reductions in air pollutant emissions. Here, we quantitatively evaluate changes in ambient NO2, O3, and PM2.5 concentrations arising from these emission changes in 11 cities globally by applying a deweathering machine learning technique. Sudden decreases in deweathered NO2 concentrations and increases in O3 were...

This paper provides some of the first evidence of the relationship between eco-innovation and employment. Adopting a O*NET based task approach, in a study of the Dutch firms, we show that eco-innovation has no impact on overall employment. However, compared to non-eco-innovators there is an 18.2% increase in the number of green jobs (equivalent to...

Mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is anticipated in the years ahead, driven primarily by policy incentives, rising incomes, and technological advancements. However, mass adoption is predicated on the availability and affordability of the raw materials required to facilitate this transformation. The implications of material shortages are curr...

Electric vehicles (EVs) are increasingly being seen as part of the solution to address environmental issues related to fossil fuel use. At the forefront of the EV revolution is China where EV sales have witnessed a dramatic increase. A direct consequence of a larger number of EVs on the roads is the growth in retired batteries once they have reache...

In this article we draw upon early lessons from the 2020 Covid-19 crisis and discuss how these may relate to a future research agenda in environmental economics. In particular, we describe how the events surrounding the Covid-19 crisis may inform environmental research related to globalization and cooperation, the green transition, pricing carbon e...

We quantify the impact of the Wuhan Covid-19 lockdown on concentrations of four air pollutants using a two-step approach. First, we use machine learning to remove the confounding effects of weather conditions on pollution concentrations. Second, we use a new augmented synthetic control method (Ben-Michael et al. in The augmented synthetic control m...

COVID-19 is an unprecedented global health crisis that will have immeasurable consequences for our economic and social well-being. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, stated “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic”. Currently, there is no robust scientific basis to the existin...

Since joining the WTO in 2001 restrictions on foreign entry into China's energy sector have been steadily reduced. We investigate the impact of Royal Dutch Shell's entry on the pricing behavior of three varieties of gasoline in the retail market of China. Using a difference in difference pairwise estimator we show that a year after entry, the avera...

Our study of French exporters examines the causal relationship between innovation and extensive and intensive margins of trade using a propensity score matching and difference‐in‐differences approach. Results show innovation has a positive impact on total exports driven primarily through the intensive margin. To understand the absence of an extensi...

In this paper we use a repeat-sales model to analyse the price path of properties affected by flooding in England between 1995 and 2014. Our dataset contains information on 4.8 million houses with at least one repeat-sale. This database is merged with high-definition GIS data delineating the spatial extent of all recorded flood incidents in England...

Energy is an essential input into a firm's production process. In this paper we investigate how electricity price changes across Chinese provinces affect the decision of firms to switch production from one industry to another. To address potential endogeneity between electricity prices and unobservable province level policies we construct an instru...

This paper is the first to examine the short term local economic impact of tropical cyclones by estimating the effects on monthly nightlight intensity. More specifically, for Guangdong Province in Southern China, we proxy monthly economic activity with remote sensing derived monthly night time light intensity and combine this with local measures of...

This paper examines the complex and interdependent relationship between importing and exporting for a panel of Chinese manufacturing firms. We estimate the decision to import and export simultaneously within a dynamic random‐effects bivariate probit framework addressing the endogenous initial conditions problem. Results show that decisions to expor...

In this article we identify the impact of the construction of flood defenses on property prices using a difference‐in‐differences repeat‐sales methodology. Our data set contains information on over 12 million individual property transactions, which is merged with GIS data identifying the spatial location and main characteristics of 1,666 flood defe...

In this paper we use the 1995 Kobe earthquake as a natural experiment to examine the impact of a large exogenous physical shock on local economic activity. For the first time we are able to control for local spatial heterogeneity in the damage caused by a natural disaster using geo-coded plant location and unique building-level surveys. In a surviv...

In this paper we assess the extent to which power outages affect the sales of firms across different African economies. We address the potential endogeneity concerns endemic in much of the existing literature by constructing an instrument for power outages based on the varying share of electricity produced by hydro-power as a result of variation in...

Economic theory suggests that, other things being equal, properties located within a floodplain should suffer a price discount. A survey of the existing evidence nonetheless reveals that this price discount lies anywhere between − 75.5% to a + 61.0% price premium. In this paper we summarise and explore the wide variation in the results to obtain ‘b...

Vietnam is a country with diverse terrain and climatic conditions and a dependency on hydropower for a significant proportion of its power needs and as such, is particularly vulnerable to changes in climate. In this paper we apply SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) derived discharge simulation results coupled with regression analysis to estimate...

We review the literature that investigates the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and the environment. After reviewing the theoretical literature, we discuss two broad strands of research. First, the impact of environmental regulations on the choice of plant location and second, the impact of FDI on the emissions of various pollut...

Green growth is increasingly being seen as a means of simultaneously meeting current and future climate change obligations and reducing unemployment. This paper uses detailed industry-level data from the Bureau of Labor Statistic's Green Goods and Services survey to examine how the provision of so-called green goods and services has affected variou...

In March 2014 China announced its long awaited plan for managing the migration of the rural population into already overcrowded urban areas. The so called “new style” of urbanization has potentially important implications for China’s energy use. However, the relationship between urbanization and energy intensity is not straight-forward. This papers...

In this paper we examine the extent to which pre-disaster planning and post-disaster aid can help firms recover from the negative impact of a natural disaster. Using detailed plant-level data covering the areas affected by the March 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami we find that the number of stopped days of operation was negatively impa...

This paper investigates various aspects of the relationship between firm productivity and importing for a large sample of Chinese firms between 2002 and 2006 making a distinction between the origin, variety, skill and technology content of imports. Employing a random effects probit model and a propensity score matching with difference‐in‐difference...

The need for developed countries to take a lead in the global fight against climate change is generally acknowledged and was intrinsic to the 2015 Paris climate change agreement. An understanding of the way in which environmental policy in advanced nations has developed and which policies have had a significant impact on the reduction in the emissi...

Cold has been much neglected in the energy debate. Governments are developing strategies and policies to green everything from electricity to transport to heat, but the energy and environmental impacts of cooling have so far been largely ignored. This is a serious oversight, since making things cold is energy intensive and can be highly polluting,...

In the light of climate uncertainty and growing concern for the natural environment, an increasingly important aspect of global business is the environmental behaviour of firms. In this paper we consider the factors that influence firms' environmental actions (EAs). Our study of Argentinean firms concentrates on measures of environmental spillovers...

In recent years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of firms shifting stages of their production processes overseas. In this paper we investigate whether firms outsource the dirtier stages of production to minimise domestic environmental regulation costs-a process broadly consistent with the pollution haven hypothesis. We develop a the...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the energy intensity of Chinese cities and the location of foreign firms employing a unique dataset of 206 of the largest prefecture-level cities between 2005 and 2008. Our results reveal a non linear inverted-U shaped relationship between energy intensity and city-level per capita income with t...

This paper examines the role played by community characteristics in influencing local exposure to toxic releases, focusing specifically on ethnic fractionalization and polarisation. In contrast to the previous literature, this study argues that it is the fractionalization and/or polarisation of ethnic groups that is the relevant consideration, rath...

AbstractA popular explanation for China's rapid economic growth in recent years has been the dramatic increase in the number of private domestic‐ and foreign‐owned firms and a decline in the state‐owned sector. However, recent evidence suggests that China's state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) are in fact stronger than ever. In this paper, we examine ove...

In order to gain a greater understanding of firms' 'environmental behaviour' this paper explores the factors that influence firms' emissions intensities and provides the first analysis of the determinants of firm level carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Focussing on Japan, the paper also examines whether firms' CO2 emissions are influenced by the emis...

The disposal of waste by landfill generates community concerns, during both site operations and following the cessation of activities. Whilst previous hedonic studies have generally examined the impact on property prices of distance to the nearest active landfill site this paper presents a study for Birmingham in England in which properties are sim...

The last decade has witnessed a renewed interest in the relationship between environmental regulations and international capital flows. However, empirical studies have so far failed to find conclusive evidence for this so-called pollution haven or race to the bottom effect where foreign direct investment (FDI) is assumed to be attracted to low regu...

There is a fear among East Asian governments that China's rapid export driven growth is significantly impairing the export performance of their own countries. The common belief among East Asian economies is that to remain competitive they must improve the quality of their exports relative to those of China. In this paper, we show how the emergence...

In this paper we contribute to the literature on the measurement of international trade flows. Specifically, we combine changes in the volume and quality in matched trade changes to present a simple new index together with a geometric framework that can be used to visualise changes in quality and volume simultaneously. We illustrate the usefulness...

In response to equity concerns surrounding the spatial distribution of CO2 emissions and assumptions of CO2 convergence within some climate models, this paper examines the convergence of CO2 emissions within the OECD over the period 1870–2004. More specifically, using the Local Whittle estimator and its variants we examine whether relative per capi...

In this paper we make the distinction between single-product and multi-product firms to contribute to our understanding of the complex relationship between multinational enterprises (MNEs), exporting and economic development. Using firm-level data for Thailand we show that the number of goods produced causes a larger variation in exports volumes th...

This paper contributes to the small but growing body of literature which tries to explain why, despite the predictions of some theoretical studies, empirical support for the pollution haven hypothesis remains limited. We break from the previous literature, which tends to concentrate on US trade patterns, and focus on Japan. In common with Ederingto...

This paper investigates the relationship between firm heterogeneity and a firm’s decision to export, using the annual survey of Thai manufacturing firms from 2001 to 2004. A significant contribution of this paper is that we are, for the first time, able to break down FDI by country of origin to observe whether the behaviour of MNEs differs by regio...

This paper examines the role played by community characteristics in influencing local environmental quality, focusing specifically on ethnic diversity. In contrast to the previous literature, this study argues that it is the fractionalization and/or polarization of ethnic groups that is the relevant consideration, rather than the population share o...

In recent years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of firms shifting stages of their production processes overseas. In this paper we investigate whether firms outsource the dirtier stages of production to minimise domestic environmental regulation costs - a process broadly consistent with the pollution haven hypothesis. We develop a t...

Within a compensating wage differential framework we investigate whether there is a wage premium for working in a pollution intensive industry. Our results for the economy as a whole suggest a small wage premium of approximately one quarter of one percent associated with the risk of working in a dirty job. This premium rises to over fifteen percent...

Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effect...

There is an extensive literature that examines the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and the productivity and competitiveness of domestic firms. Using estimation techniques from the productivity spillover literature, this paper tests for the presence of environmental spillovers from foreign firms. On the basis that foreign-owned...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between economic growth and industrial pollution emissions in China using data for 112 major cities between 2001 and 2004. Using disaggregated data we separate FDI inflows from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan from those of other foreign economies. We examine four industrial water pollution indicators (waste...

A relatively recent development in the intra-industry trade (IIT) literature is the measurement of the simultaneous import and export of quality-differentiated products, commonly known as vertical and horizontal IIT. A recent paper from Azhar and Elliott [Azhar, A. K. M. & Elliott, R. J. R. (2006), On the Measurement of Product Quality in Intra-Ind...

We investigate occupational attainment as well as estimating earnings differentials for non-white migrants and non-white natives, including occupational effects. We control for the occupational selection of immigrants and compare across native and immigrant groups. Relative to white natives, we find no evidence of an ethnic pay disadvantage for whi...

This paper investigates the relationship between firm heterogeneity and a firm’s decision to export, using the annual survey of Thai manufacturing firms from 2001 to 2004. A significant contribution of this paper is that we are, for the first time, able to break down FDI by country of origin to observe whether the behavior of MNEs differs by region...

There is a long established thread of the international trade literature concerned with the measurement of intra-industry trade (IIT). Two distinct strands of the literature have developed: First, measures of marginal IIT that are concerned with the adjustment implications of volume-based changes in IIT; second, measures of vertical and horizontal...

Given China's rapid industrial expansion a detailed understanding of the linkages through which industrial activity affects the environment is crucial if the resultant environmental impact is to be minimised. This paper utilises a dataset of Chinese industry specific emissions for a variety of pollutants between 1997 and 2003 to provide the first s...

In an era of closer worldwide economic integration, the role that environmental regulations play in shaping a country's comparative advantage is greater than ever. This has led to fears that 'dirty' firms will relocate from developed to developing countries where environmental regulations may be less stringent - the so-called pollution haven hypoth...

This paper revisits the time-series literature on the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and examines the robustness of previous results. Using a sample of OECD countries for the period 1950–2002 we employ a battery of stationarity and unit root tests including those that allow for cross-sectional dependencies within the panel...

This paper examines the relationship between firms' characteristics and their decision to participate in export markets, using the annual survey of manufacturing firms in Thailand during 2001 and 2004. The main highlight of this paper is that we emphasise the importance of financial variables as a proxy for sunk entry costs. We find that liquidity...

In this paper, we shed additional light on the complex relationship between multinational enterprises (MNEs), exporting and economic development by making a distinction between single and multi-product firms. As far as we are aware, the export behavior of foreign firms in a multi-product setting has not previously been considered for a developing c...

The pollution haven hypothesis (PHH) and the capital-labour hypothesis (KLH) state that the relative level of a country's environmental regulations and capital and labour endowments determines its comparative advantage respectively. Since these hypotheses lead to conflicting predictions as to whether the North or the South will specialise in pollut...

In this paper we extend the debate on the environmental implications of foreign direct investment in developing countries by examining a new mechanism through which foreign influence can affect the environmental performance of firms. We focus on the extent to which key workers who have had previous training or experience in a foreign owned firm tra...