Environmental Regulation and Foreign Direct Investments: Evidence from a new measure of environmental stringency

This paper investigates the impact of environmental regulations on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) using a novel index that distinguishes between the implementation and enforcement of environmental policy across 111 countries from 2001 to 2018. Leveraging bi- lateral FDI data and a structural gravity model, we find robust evidence of a Pollution Haven Effect: stricter environmental regulations in host countries are associated with lower inward FDI. The effect is more pronounced in emerging markets and in environments with higher corruption. Importantly, we show that FDI responds more strongly to policy implementation, capturing formal regulatory commitment, than to enforcement, measured as deviations be- tween predicted and actual emissions. In addition, bilateral FDI patterns are shaped by the environmental stringency gap between source and host countries, consistent with regulatory arbitrage behavior.