7. Conclusion
Previous research has highlighted the important role of uncertainty for business planning e both in general as well as in the regulatory context. Analyzing survey data from a sample of EU ETSparticipating companies across different industries, countries, and trading years, this article adds two new aspects to our knowledge regarding the relationship between regulation-related uncertainty and corporate investments. First, we show that different types of regulation-related uncertainty may differently trigger firm investments in abatement technologies. Specifically, regulationinduced uncertainty (e.g., uncertainty in carbon prices) has a positive effect on corporate abatement investments, while we do not find an effect of regulatory uncertainty (e.g., uncertainties about political processes). Second, we identify investment history as an important factor that affects firms' propensity to invest in abatement technologies e independently of the presence of regulationrelated uncertainties. We cannot contest the possibility that more stringency and more certainty about the long-term direction and concrete design of a policy itself would further accelerate abatement investments in the business world. However, by disentangling different dimensions of uncertainty and by adding the component of investment history to this specific debate, our study provides evidence that uncertainty of environmental regulations might be less relevant for corporate abatement investments than is often argued by practitioners.
