Record Display for the EPA National Library Catalog

RECORD NUMBER: 1 OF 7

Main Title 'Optional' pollution abatement - whose benefits matter, and how much? /
Author Shadbegian, Ronald J.
Other Authors
Author Title of a Work
Gray, Wayne B.
Publisher U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Center for Environmental Economics,
Year Published 2002
OCLC Number 57253310
Subjects We use a plant-level panel data set with approximately 300 pulp and paper mills from 1985-1997 We find support for the importance of both the benefits from pollution abatement and political factors related to the people affected The results suggest substantial differences in the weights assigned to different types of people In some models the benefits received by out-of-state people seem to count only half as much as benefits received in-state, but their weight increases if the bordering states Congressmen are strongly pro-environment Some variables are also associated with greater regulatory activity being directed towards the plant, although those results are less consistent with our hypotheses than the pollution results One set of results was consistently contrary to expectations: plants with more nonwhites nearby emit less pollution Some of our results might be due to endogenous sorting of people based on pollution, but an attempt to examine this using the local population turnover rate found evidence of sorting for only one of four pollutants
Internet Access
Description Access URL
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eed.nsf/WPNumberNew/2002-05?OpenDocument
Holdings
Library Call Number Additional Info Location Last
Modified
Checkout
Status
EJBR EPAAUX HC79.E5N386 2002-05 Headquarters Library/Washington,DC 04/03/2020
Collation 44 unnumbered pages ; 28 cm.
Notes
"September, 2002." We use a plant-level panel data set with approximately 300 pulp and paper mills from 1985-1997. We find support for the importance of both the benefits from pollution abatement and political factors related to the people affected. The results suggest substantial differences in the weights assigned to different types of people. In some models the benefits received by out-of-state people seem to count only half as much as benefits received in-state, but their weight increases if the bordering states Congressmen are strongly pro-environment. Some variables are also associated with greater regulatory activity being directed towards the plant, although those results are less consistent with our hypotheses than the pollution results. One set of results was consistently contrary to expectations: plants with more nonwhites nearby emit less pollution. Some of our results might be due to endogenous sorting of people based on pollution, but an attempt to examine this using the local population turnover rate found evidence of sorting for only one of four pollutants.
Contents Notes
We examine the allocation of environmental regulatory effort across U.S. pulp and paper mills, looking at measures of regulatory activity (inspections and enforcement actions) and levels of air and water pollution from those mills. We combine measures of the marginal benefits of air and water pollution abatement at each mill with measures of the characteristics of the people living near the mill. This allows for the possibility that some people may count less in the calculations of regulators (and polluters), either because they have less political clout or because they live in another jurisdiction.