Clean, competitive, and productive? The impact of environment‐friendly technologies on exporting and productivity of the manufacturing companies in Belarus

Abstract

The impact of trade on the environment is a big concern, with increasing focus on the role of international trade in climate change. This study explores the bidirectional relationships between export intensity, adoption of environmentally friendly measures, and productivity using the firm‐level data from Belarus. It aims to answer whether exporting enterprises are more environmentally oriented and whether the application of cleaner technologies brings productivity improvement and increases the export intensity of an enterprise. We estimate a system of structural equations using three‐stage least squares in which export intensity, adoption of environmentally friendly measures, and productivity are by design treated as endogenous. The findings show that when a company adopts one more environmentally friendly measure, it increases its export intensity by 4.4%–4.6%. Adoption of cleaner technologies improves labor productivity in a company by 20.7%, but it is negatively associated with its resource productivity (a 1.9% decrease), which results in the neutral effect on the total productivity.