Strategic interaction and institutional quality determinants of environmental regulations

We provide a framework that links the impacts of own and neighboring measures of institutional quality as well as neighboring country environmental regulations on environmental regulation stringency in own country. We estimate a Spatial Panel Durbin model to identify significant determinants of environmental regulations for several European countries. We find no evidence of strategic interaction as the environmental regulations implemented by a neighbor have no significant impact on environmental regulations implemented in the own country. The higher the quality of government institutions in a country, the more stringent the implementation of environmental regulations. Additionally, some institutional quality variables significantly positively impact the stringency of environmental regulations in neighboring countries.