The dissertation strives to find empirical evidence of the links among differences in countries'environmental regulations and international capital flows in the form of FDI or international trade.

As the trade versus environment debate is not new, the dissertation commences with a systematic quantitative summary of evidence across empirical studies of pollution havens and FDI using meta- analysis.

In the first paper, previous empirical studies on the topic are evaluated using a meta-analysis to test whether the findings from previous studies are sensitive to the various modelling approaches employed. It is demonstrated that certain aspects of research design are crucial in explaining the significance of the findings.

The second paper employs data that allow FDI to be disaggregated according to its motive. The results show that environmental stringency of the host country and its enforcement negatively affects Norwegian multinationals with efficiency-seeking motives.

It is also found that Norwegian affiliates in environmentally more regulated countries on average receive less investment from their parents company in terms of equity capital as well as capital stock and assets.

After separating out the observations, it is shown that the total export from affiliates to parent companies in Norway are significantly decreasing with the level of environmental stringency in the host countries and its interaction variables with the level of enforcement.

The last paper in the dissertation utilises novel firm-level customs data to investigate the links between the pollution intensity of the firm, proxied by the firm's energy intensity, its capital intensity, and its imports.

The results indicate that more pollution-intensive firms in Norway tend to engage in more import activities from countries with lenient environmental regulations. It is also demonstrated that the elasticities of imports with regard to the firms' pollution intensity differ greatly, depending on the level of aggregation at which the regressions were run.

As it is learned that only a minority of the firms in Norway undertake outward foreign direct investments, the results suggest that the concern regarding a pollution haven through capital flight is overstressed.

Alief Aulia Rezza is born in Indonesia (1983). He has been a Doctoral Research Fellow at The Department of Economics at the Norwegian School of Economics. He has a MSc. in Development and Resource Economics from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) and BA in Economics from University of Indonesia. Since 2012 he has been an Analyst at Statoil in Stavanger.

Prescribed topic for the trial lecture:

Trade, foreign direct investment and environmental regulations: what is the need for international coordination?

Time of the trial lecture:

10:15 - 11:00 in Kristian Gerhard Jebsen Centre, NHH

Title of the thesis:

Essays on Trade and Environmental Regulations

Time and place for the defense:

12:15 in Kristian Gerhard Jebsen Centre, NHH

Members of the evaluation committee:

Lecturer Stefanie Haller, UCD Dublin
Associate Professor Torfinn Harding, NHH
Associate Professor Wilko Letterie, Maastricht University

Supervising committee:

Professor Øivind A. Nilsen, Department of Economics, NHH
Associate professor Gregory Corcos at the Department of Economics, Ecole Polytechnique

The trial lecture and thesis defense will be open to the public. Copies of the thesis will be available from: bib@nhh.no



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