Download or read book Two Essays in Environmental Economics and Offshoring written by Mohan Zhou and published by Open Dissertation Press. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation, "Two Essays in Environmental Economics and Offshoring" by Mohan, Zhou, 周默涵, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: This dissertation consists of two independent studies. The first study belongs to the field of environmental economics and the second is on international trade, with a focus on offshoring. In the first study, we investigate firm investment in advanced abatement technology under a heterogeneous firms framework. In contrast to existing literature, we find that the optimal level of investment in advanced abatement technology is an inverted U-shaped function of firm productivity. More-productive firms have superior environmental performance, in the sense that they have lower emission per unit of output. Comparative statics shows that in response to a tighter environmental regulation, more-productive firms tend to raise their investment in advanced abatement technology while less-productive firms do the opposite. Key theoretical predictions are confirmed by Chinese data. The second study analyzes the decision of a multinational firm from a developed country to slice a production chain to allocate different tasks of the production chain globally. The process involves a wide range of tasks that varies from very routine jobs to very research and development (R&D) intensive work. We find that under certain conditions, a drop in offshoring costs (1) leads to more slicing (an increase in the length of production chain) and more offshoring, (2) stimulates R&D, and (3) raises employment in the developed country. DOI: 10.5353/th_b5089971 Subjects: Environmental economics Offshore outsourcing