An empirical analysis of the nonlinear relationship between environmental regulation and manufacturing productivity

The relationship between environmental regulation and productivity has been broadly analyzed. Here, we propose the use of one member of the family of exponential Gumbel distributions in order to study a potential nonlinear relationship between environmental regulation and manufacturing productivity in Mexico using a data set at the plant level. We show that the link between environmental regulation and productivity is in fact nonlinear and that there is a decreasing trade-off between those variables in the manufacturing industry. We find that such trade-off is high for small firms, but almost negligible for large companies. Thus, we argue that much of the debate on different effects is due to the heterogeneity of the industry. This result might be useful for the design of policies devoted to enhancing environmental performance.