Public governance versus corporate governance: Evidence from oil drilling in forests

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cust, James; Harding, Torfinn; Krings, Hanna; Rivera-Ballesteros, Alexis
• 署名单位: The World Bank; University of Oxford; Universitetet i Stavanger; Norwegian School of Economics (NHH); RWTH Aachen University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103070
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: institutions; Oil and gas exploration; deforestation; corporate governance; environment; Voluntary standards ESG; ESG; Pollution halo

摘要

Petroleum companies look for oil and gas in some of the most remote and biodiverse forested areas on the planet. To study how local environmental footprints vary across countries and companies, we combine global company-level geo-coded data on oil drilling with high resolution data on forest loss. We find that oil wells drilled in countries with better public governance, measured by democracy scores, are associated with substantially lower forest loss in the period after drilling. In contrast, we do not find evidence of less forest clearance among companies with presumptively 'better' corporate governance practices, such as major international companies, publicly listed companies, or members of an industry association committed to high environmental standards. These results do not support a pollution haloeffect, whereby companies might bring better environmental practices with them, exceeding domestic environmental standards.