IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/feb/natura/00481.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Regulatory Federalism and the Distribution of Air Pollutant Emissions

Author

Listed:
  • Erwin Bulte
  • John List
  • Mark Strazicich

Abstract

Recent empirical work suggests that (i) incomes are converging through time, and (ii) income and pollution levels are linked. This paper weds these two literatures by examining the spatial and temporal distribution of pollution. After establishing that theoretical predictions about whether pollution will converge are critically linked to certain structural parameters, we explore pollution convergence using state-level data on two important pollutants-nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides-from 1929 to 1999. We find stronger evidence of converging emission rates during the federal pollution control years (1970-1999) than during the local control years (1929-1969). These results suggest that income convergence alone may not be sufficient to induce convergence of pollutant emissions.

Suggested Citation

  • Erwin Bulte & John List & Mark Strazicich, 2007. "Regulatory Federalism and the Distribution of Air Pollutant Emissions," Natural Field Experiments 00481, The Field Experiments Website.
    • Handle: RePEc:feb:natura:00481
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://s3.amazonaws.com/fieldexperiments-papers2/papers/00481.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Azomahou, Theophile & Laisney, Francois & Nguyen Van, Phu, 2006. "Economic development and CO2 emissions: A nonparametric panel approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 1347-1363, August.
    2. Mark Strazicich & John List, 2003. "Are CO 2 Emission Levels Converging Among Industrial Countries?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 24(3), pages 263-271, March.
    3. Daniel L. Millimet & John A. List & Thanasis Stengos, 2003. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve: Real Progress or Misspecified Models?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 1038-1047, November.
    4. Brooks, Nancy & Sethi, Rajiv, 1997. "The Distribution of Pollution: Community Characteristics and Exposure to Air Toxics," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 233-250, February.
    5. Barro, Robert J & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 223-251, April.
      • Barro, R.J. & Sala-I-Martin, X., 1991. "Convergence," Papers 645, Yale - Economic Growth Center.
      • Barro, Robert J. & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Scholarly Articles 3451299, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    6. Lee, Junsoo & Strazicich, Mark C, 2001. "Break Point Estimation and Spurious Rejections with Endogenous Unit Root Tests," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 63(5), pages 535-558, December.
    7. Robert M. Solow, 1956. "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 70(1), pages 65-94.
    8. Daniel L. Millimet & John A. List, 2003. "A Natural Experiment on the ‘Race to the Bottom’ Hypothesis: Testing for Stochastic Dominance in Temporal Pollution Trends," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(4), pages 395-420, September.
    9. Junsoo Lee & Mark C. Strazicich, 2013. "Minimum LM unit root test with one structural break," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(4), pages 2483-2492.
    10. Wellisch,Dietmar, 2000. "Theory of Public Finance in a Federal State," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521630351.
    11. Timothy J. Vogelsang & Marc Tomljanovich, 2002. "Are U.S. regions converging? Using new econometric methods to examine old issues," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 49-62.
    12. Seema Arora & Timothy N. Cason, 1999. "Do Community Characteristics Influence Environmental Outcomes? Evidence from the Toxics Release Inventory," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(4), pages 691-716, April.
    13. N. Gregory Mankiw & David Romer & David N. Weil, 1992. "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 407-437.
    14. Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1991. "Convergence across States and Regions," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(1), pages 107-182.
    15. Engle, R. F. & Granger, C. W. J. (ed.), 1991. "Long-Run Economic Relationships: Readings in Cointegration," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198283393, Decembrie.
    16. Perron, Pierre, 1989. "The Great Crash, the Oil Price Shock, and the Unit Root Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(6), pages 1361-1401, November.
    17. Nunes, Luis C & Newbold, Paul & Kuan, Chung-Ming, 1997. "Testing for Unit Roots with Breaks: Evidence on the Great Crash and the Unit Root Hypothesis Reconsidered," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 59(4), pages 435-448, November.
    18. Friedman, Milton, 1992. "Do Old Fallacies Ever Die?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(4), pages 2129-2132, December.
    19. Im, Kyung So & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Shin, Yongcheol, 2003. "Testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 53-74, July.
    20. James T. Hamilton, 1995. "Testing for environmental racism: Prejudice, profits, political power?," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(1), pages 107-132.
    21. Junsoo Lee & Mark C. Strazicich, 2001. "Break Point Estimation and Spurious Rejections With Endogenous Unit Root Tests," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 63(5), pages 535-558, December.
    22. Arrow, Kenneth & Bolin, Bert & Costanza, Robert & Dasgupta, Partha & Folke, Carl & Holling, C.S. & Jansson, Bengt-Owe & Levin, Simon & Mäler, Karl-Göran & Perrings, Charles & Pimentel, David, 1996. "Economic growth, carrying capacity, and the environment," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 104-110, February.
    23. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64, pages 416-416.
    24. Loewy, Michael B. & Papell, David H., 1996. "Are U.S. regional incomes converging? Some further evidence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 587-598, December.
    25. Andreoni, James & Levinson, Arik, 2001. "The simple analytics of the environmental Kuznets curve," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 269-286, May.
    26. List, John A. & Gallet, Craig A., 1999. "The environmental Kuznets curve: does one size fit all?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 409-423, December.
    27. John List, 1999. "Have Air Pollutant Emissions Converged Amongst U.S. Regions?," Natural Field Experiments 00528, The Field Experiments Website.
    28. Tim Jeppesen & John A. List & Henk Folmer, 2002. "Environmental Regulations and New Plant Location Decisions: Evidence from a Meta‐Analysis," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 19-49, February.
    29. Stokey, Nancy L, 1998. "Are There Limits to Growth?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(1), pages 1-31, February.
    30. John A. List & Aart de Zeeuw (ed.), 2002. "Recent Advances in Environmental Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2728.
    31. Oates, Wallace E. & Schwab, Robert M., 1988. "Economic competition among jurisdictions: efficiency enhancing or distortion inducing?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 333-354, April.
    32. Costanza, Robert, 1995. "Economic growth, carrying capacity, and the environment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 89-90, November.
    33. Leonard P. Gianessi & Henry M. Peskin & Edward Wolff, 1979. "The Distributional Effects of Uniform Air Pollution Policy in the United States," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(2), pages 281-301.
    34. Carlino, Gerald A. & Mills, Leonard O., 1993. "Are U.S. regional incomes converging? : A time series analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 335-346, November.
    35. Wallace E. Oates, 1991. "Studies In Fiscal Federalism," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 342.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Cunado, J. & Perez de Gracia, F., 2006. "Real convergence in Africa in the second-half of the 20th century," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 153-167.
    2. Juncal Cunado & Fernando Perez de Gracia, 2006. "Real convergence in some Central and Eastern European countries," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(20), pages 2433-2441.
    3. William Brock & M. Taylor, 2010. "The Green Solow model," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 127-153, June.
    4. Strazicich, Mark C. & Lee, Junsoo & Day, Edward, 2004. "Are incomes converging among OECD countries? Time series evidence with two structural breaks," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 131-145, March.
    5. Mark Strazicich & John List, 2003. "Are CO 2 Emission Levels Converging Among Industrial Countries?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 24(3), pages 263-271, March.
    6. Meng, Ming & Payne, James E. & Lee, Junsoo, 2013. "Convergence in per capita energy use among OECD countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 536-545.
    7. Carlino, Gerald A. & Mills, Leonard, 1996. "Testing neoclassical convergence in regional incomes and earnings," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 565-590, December.
    8. Ceylan, Reşat & Abiyev, Vasif, 2016. "An examination of convergence hypothesis for EU-15 countries," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 96-105.
    9. Steven Cook, 2008. "An alternative perspective on the stochastic convergence of incomes in the United States," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(12), pages 929-934.
    10. Richard T. Carson, 2010. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve: Seeking Empirical Regularity and Theoretical Structure," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 4(1), pages 3-23, Winter.
    11. David I. Stern, 2017. "The environmental Kuznets curve after 25 years," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 7-28, April.
    12. Josep Carrion-i-Silvestre & Vicente German-Soto, 2009. "Panel data stochastic convergence analysis of the Mexican regions," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 303-327, October.
    13. Durlauf, Steven N. & Quah, Danny T., 1999. "The new empirics of economic growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 235-308, Elsevier.
    14. Fábio Augusto Reis Gomes & Cleomar Gomes da Silva, 2006. "Hysteresis Vs. Nairu And Convergence Vs. Divergence: The Behavior Of Regional Unemployment Rates In Brazil," Anais do XXXIV Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 34th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 161, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    15. Mariam Camarero & Yurena Mendoza & Javier Ordóñez, 2011. "Re-examining CO2 emissions. Is the assessment of convergence meaningless?," Working Papers 2011/06, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    16. Wagner, Martin, 2008. "The carbon Kuznets curve: A cloudy picture emitted by bad econometrics?," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 388-408, August.
    17. Eftychia Tsanana & Constantinos Katrakilidis, 2014. "Do Balkan economies catch up with EU? New evidence from panel unit root analysis," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(4), pages 641-662, November.
    18. Burcu Ozcan, 2014. "Does Income Converge among EU Member Countries following the Post-War Period? Evidence from the PANKPSS Test," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(3), pages 22-38, October.
    19. Neophyta Empora, 2017. "Air pollution spillovers and U.S. state productivity growth," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 06-2017, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    20. Carson, Richard T, 2009. "Searching for Empirical Regularity and Theoretical Structure: The Environmental Kuznets Curve," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt4m6263c2, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:feb:natura:00481. 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: David Franks (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.fieldexperiments.com .

    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.