Date & Time：May 21, 2019 10:00 - 11:30a.m.
Venue：SEM320 Meeting Room
Speaker：Prof. Laure de Preux（Imperial College London）
Inviter：Peiyao Shen
Abstract：
Whether environmental-friendly management practices can improve firms’ performance has been a long standing debate. Using a survey methodology that has been proven to minimize various form of cognitive bias, we conducted interviews with managers in 219 companies located in Beijing city and Hubei province. Our result shows that a higher quality of environmental management is associated with better firm performance. Specifically, effective management of energy utilization and emission control are correlated with higher turnover and profitability. Firms that exhibit higher awareness of pollution also registered higher gross margin. Among the various measures, we also found that firms with better emission management plus tougher enforcement of emission and energy consumption targets tend to invest more effort in ‘green’ process innovation. In addition evidence from patent data pertaining to a subset of firms covered by the pilot emissions trading scheme (ETS) suggest that the policy is effective in inducing firms to invest in green R&D.
Speaker Biography：
Laure is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School, and affiliated to the Centre for Health Economics & Policy Innovation.
Laure’s research interests lie in environmental and health economics. She works on climate change policies’ evaluation, the impact of health insurance on lifestyles, and the determinants of health with a particular focus on the effect of climate and pollution on individual’s behaviour and healthcare utilisation.Prior to joining Imperial College Business School, Laure gained a Master’s in Business from HEC Lausanne and an MSc in Economics from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, before completing her PhD in Economics at the University of York under the supervision of Prof. Hugh Gravelle. She also worked at the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE between 2008 and 2016. Laure was awarded the Teaching Excellence Award for PhD supervision in 2017, and the Teaching Excellence Award for undergraduate teaching in 2018.
