Transboundary Spillovers and Decentralization of Environmental Policies
Abstract
Most US federal environmental policies allow states to assume responsibility for implementation and enforcement of regulations; states with this responsibility are referred to as "authorized'' or having "primacy.'' Although such decentralization may have benefits, it may also have costs with pollution spillovers across states. This paper estimates these costs empirically by studying the free riding of states authorized under the Clean Water Act. The analysis examines water quality in rivers around the US and includes fixed effects for the location where water quality is monitored to address unobserved geographic heterogeneity. The estimated equations suggest that free riding gives rise to a 4% degradation of water quality downstream of authorized states, with an environmental cost downstream of $17 million annually.Download Info
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 10717.Length:
Date of creation: Aug 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10717
Note: PE EEE
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Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Sigman, Hilary, 2005. "Transboundary spillovers and decentralization of environmental policies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 82-101, July.
- Hilary Sigman, 2004. "Transboundary Spillovers and Decentralization of Environmental Policies," Departmental Working Papers 200416, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
- Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
- H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2004-09-30 (All new papers)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- James Alm & H. Spencer Banzhaf, 2011.
"Designing Economic Instruments for the Environment in a Decentralized Fiscal System,"
Working Papers
1104, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
- James Alm & H. Spencer Banzhaf, 2012. "Designing Economic Instruments For The Environment In A Decentralized Fiscal System," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 177-202, 04.
- Alm, James & Banzhaf, H. Spencer, 2007. "Designing economic instruments for the environment in a decentralized fiscal system," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4379, The World Bank.
- Paul Missios & Ida Ferrara & Halis Murat Yildiz, 2011. "Inter-regional Competition, Comparative Advantage, and Environmental Federalism," Working Papers 027, Ryerson University, Department of Economics.
- Fredriksson, Per G. & Mani, Muthukumara & Wollscheid, Jim R., 2006. "Environmental federalism : a panacea or Pandora's box for developing countries?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3847, The World Bank.
- Sjöberg, Eric, 2012. "Political influence on environmental sanction charges in Swedish municipalities," Research Papers in Economics 2012:6, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
- Hutchinson, Emma & Kennedy, Peter W., 2008. "State enforcement of federal standards: Implications for interstate pollution," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 316-344, August.
- Hilary Sigman, 2007. "Decentralization and Environmental Quality: An International Analysis of Water Pollution," NBER Working Papers 13098, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Mohammad Reza Farzanegan & Tim Mennel, 2012. "Fiscal decentralization and Pollution: Institutions Matter," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201222, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
- Gerard van der Laan & Nigel Moes, 2012. "Transboundary Externalities and Property Rights: An International River Pollution Model," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 12-006/1, Tinbergen Institute.
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- Dinar, Ariel & Kemper, Karin & Blomquist, William & Kurukulasuriya, Pradeep, 2007. "Whitewater: Decentralization of river basin water resource management," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 851-867.
- Eric A. Coleman, 2009. "Institutional factors affecting biophysical outcomes in forest management," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 122-146.
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