IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ecdequ/v23y2009i4p329-341.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Environmental Regulations Impede Economic Growth? A Case Study of the Metal Finishing Industry in the South Coast Basin of Southern California

Author

Listed:
  • Ward Thomas

    (California State University, Northridge, CA, USA, thomas@csun.edu)

Abstract

Air pollution emitted from firms and industries in the United States poses a significant threat to human health and the environment. Economists have traditionally opposed environmental regulations based on the argument that regulations reduce economic growth. Some scholars, however, have argued that polluting firms often adjust to environmental regulations through technological innovations that have the opposite effect. This study examines the effects of environmental regulations on economic growth through a case study of the metal finishing industry in the South Coast Basin of Southern California. The industry in the Basin has been regulated since 1988 by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) as a result of the industry’s use of hexavalent chromium. Based on a comparative analysis of the metal finishing industries in Chicago and Detroit, it appears that the AQMD regulations have not had a detrimental impact on the growth of the industry in the Basin.

Suggested Citation

  • Ward Thomas, 2009. "Do Environmental Regulations Impede Economic Growth? A Case Study of the Metal Finishing Industry in the South Coast Basin of Southern California," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 23(4), pages 329-341, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecdequ:v:23:y:2009:i:4:p:329-341
    DOI: 10.1177/0891242409343184
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891242409343184
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0891242409343184?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karen Palmer & Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney & Karen Palmer & Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney, 2004. "Tightening Environmental Standards: The Benefit-Cost or the No-Cost Paradigm?," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 3, pages 53-66, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Barbera, Anthony J & McConnell, Virginia D, 1986. "Effects of Pollution Control on Industry Productivity: A Factor Demand Approach," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 161-172, December.
    3. Wayne B Gray & Ronald J Shadbegian, 1994. "Pollution Abatement Costs, Regulation And Plant-Level Productivity," Working Papers 94-14, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    4. Berman, Eli & Bui, Linda T. M., 2001. "Environmental regulation and labor demand: evidence from the South Coast Air Basin," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 265-295, February.
    5. Eli Berman & Linda T. M. Bui, 2001. "Environmental Regulation And Productivity: Evidence From Oil Refineries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(3), pages 498-510, August.
    6. Morgenstern, Richard D. & Pizer, William A. & Shih, Jhih-Shyang, 2002. "Jobs Versus the Environment: An Industry-Level Perspective," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 412-436, May.
    7. Esty, Daniel C. & Porter, Michael E., 2005. "National environmental performance: an empirical analysis of policy results and determinants," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(4), pages 381-389, August.
    8. Dale W. Jorgenson & Peter J. Wilcoxen, 1990. "Environmental Regulation and U.S. Economic Growth," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(2), pages 314-340, Summer.
    9. Adam B. Jaffe & Karen Palmer, 1997. "Environmental Regulation And Innovation: A Panel Data Study," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(4), pages 610-619, November.
    10. Adam B. Jaffe et al., 1995. "Environmental Regulation and the Competitiveness of U.S. Manufacturing: What Does the Evidence Tell Us?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 132-163, March.
    11. Gollop, Frank M & Roberts, Mark J, 1983. "Environmental Regulations and Productivity Growth: The Case of Fossil-Fueled Electric Power Generation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 654-674, August.
    12. Adam Jaffe & Richard Newell & Robert Stavins, 2002. "Environmental Policy and Technological Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 22(1), pages 41-70, June.
    13. Thomas Roediger-Schluga, 2004. "The Porter Hypothesis and the Economic Consequences of Environmental Regulation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3300.
    14. Anil Baral & Robert Engelken & Patrick Stewart, 2006. "Chromium‐Based Regulations Applicable to Metal Finishing Industries in the United States: A Policy Assessment," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 23(1), pages 1-21, January.
    15. Esty, Daniel C. & Porter, Michael E., 2005. "National environmental performance: an empirical analysis of policy results and determinants," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(4), pages 391-434, August.
    16. Milliman, Scott R. & Prince, Raymond, 1989. "Firm incentives to promote technological change in pollution control," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 247-265, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ding, Huiping & Zhao, Qilan & An, Zhirong & Tang, Ou, 2016. "Collaborative mechanism of a sustainable supply chain with environmental constraints and carbon caps," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(PA), pages 191-207.
    2. Dong Guo & Satyajit Bose & Kristina Alnes, 2017. "Employment implications of stricter pollution regulation in China: theories and lessons from the USA," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 549-569, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dietrich Earnhart & Dylan G. Rassier, 2016. "“Effective regulatory stringency” and firms’ profitability: the effects of effluent limits and government monitoring," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 111-145, October.
    2. Zhang, Yijun & Song, Yi, 2022. "Tax rebates, technological innovation and sustainable development: Evidence from Chinese micro-level data," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    3. Stefan Ambec & Mark A. Cohen & Stewart Elgie & Paul Lanoie, 2013. "The Porter Hypothesis at 20: Can Environmental Regulation Enhance Innovation and Competitiveness?," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 7(1), pages 2-22, January.
    4. Adam B. Jaffe & Richard G. Newell & Robert N. Stavins, 2004. "Technology Policy for Energy and the Environment," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 4, pages 35-68, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Stavins, Robert & Jaffe, Adam & Newell, Richard, 2000. "Technological Change and the Environment," Working Paper Series rwp00-002, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    6. Ambec, Stefan & Barla, Philippe, 2001. "Productivité et réglementation environnementale: une analyse de l'hypothèse de Porter," Cahiers de recherche 0107, Université Laval - Département d'économique.
    7. Ronald J Shadbegian & Wayne B Gray, 2001. "When Do Firms Shift Production Across States to Avoid Environmental Regulation?," Working Papers 01-18, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    8. Xiguang Cao & Min Deng & Fei Song & Shihu Zhong & Junhao Zhu, 2019. "Direct and moderating effects of environmental regulation intensity on enterprise technological innovation: The case of China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-20, October.
    9. Hamamoto, Mitsutsugu, 2006. "Environmental regulation and the productivity of Japanese manufacturing industries," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 299-312, November.
    10. Shunsuke Managi & SJames J. Opaluch & Di Jin & Thomas A. Grigalunas, 2005. "Environmental Regulations and Technological Change in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 81(2).
    11. Adam Jaffe & Richard Newell & Robert Stavins, 2002. "Environmental Policy and Technological Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 22(1), pages 41-70, June.
    12. Jaffe, Adam B. & Newell, Richard G. & Stavins, Robert N., 2003. "Chapter 11 Technological change and the environment," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 461-516, Elsevier.
    13. Lott, Margit, 2002. "Further Development of a Computable General Equilibrium-Model for the Long-Run Investigation of Global Impacts of GHG-Mitigation Policies," Conference papers 331058, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    14. Antoine Dechezleprêtre & Misato Sato, 2017. "The Impacts of Environmental Regulations on Competitiveness," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(2), pages 183-206.
    15. Dylan Rassier & Dietrich Earnhart, 2010. "Does the Porter Hypothesis Explain Expected Future Financial Performance? The Effect of Clean Water Regulation on Chemical Manufacturing Firms," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 45(3), pages 353-377, March.
    16. Giovanni Marin & Francesca Lotti, 2017. "Productivity effects of eco-innovations using data on eco-patents," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 26(1), pages 125-148.
    17. Stefan Ambec & Paul Lanoie, 2007. "When and Why Does It Pay To Be Green?," CIRANO Working Papers 2007s-20, CIRANO.
    18. Johan Brolund & Robert Lundmark, 2017. "Effect of Environmental Regulation Stringency on the Pulp and Paper Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-16, December.
    19. Francesco Crespi & Claudia Ghisetti & Francesco Quatraro, 2015. "Environmental and innovation policies for the evolution of green technologies: a survey and a test," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 5(2), pages 343-370, December.
    20. Tilmann Rave & Ursula Triebswetter, 2006. "Economic impacts of environmental regulations," ifo Forschungsberichte, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 30.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ecdequ:v:23:y:2009:i:4:p:329-341. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.