http://hdl.handle.net/1903/2208 2013-05-22T06:31:06Z 2013-05-22T06:31:06Z Ye, Fanqing http://hdl.handle.net/1903/13526 2013-02-07T04:17:24Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS Authors: Ye, Fanqing Abstract: Understanding the potential link between environmental regulations and economic activities is crucial to both the regulated industries and policy makers. This dissertation explores three key questions in order to understand environmental regulations and their impacts. 1) How to measure environmental regulatory burden? 2) What are the impacts of environmental regulations on competitiveness? 3) What are the determinants of regulatory stringency? The theory of the Pollution Haven Effect (PHE) predicts that tightening up environmental regulations will affect regulated industries' competitiveness and trade flows. In the first part of this dissertation, I construct a measure from pollution abatement costs (PAC) to quantify the changes in regulatory stringency and empirically test PHE while controlling for firm dynamics and industry composition. Previous studies have used PAC as a measure for environmental regulations. I build a theory model to show that regulation-induced changes in abatement costs contain an extensive margin (i.e. cost change due to changes in industry composition) in addition to the intensive margin (i.e. cost change for a fixed set of firms). Results from decomposition analysis confirm that, compared to the intensive margin, overall changes in PAC underestimate changes in regulatory stringency and may further lead to overestimated PHE. I then use the two margins as separate explanatory variables to explain the US's net imports from Canada, Mexico and the rest of the world. Estimation results indicate that PHE driven by the intensive margin is smaller than that estimated previously, which corrects the overestimation of using overall abatement costs. The second part of this dissertation empirically explores the determinants of regulatory stringency in the context of the US water pollution regulations. I argue that state regulators use facilities' compliance performance to infer their abatement efforts and technology in order to implement the technology-based and water quality-based control of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits. Results from econometric analyses confirm that regulators make permitting decisions based on information inferred from compliance history as well as that discovered during inspection activities. Self-disclosed violations are regarded as a signal for cooperation (i.e. adequate abatement effort under technology constraint) and will be rewarded with relaxed future permits. Non-cooperating behaviors, such as absent monitoring reports, improper operation and maintenance as detected during inspections and violations that lead to high penalties will likely result in more stringent future limit. In addition, regulators will also modify the limit levels in response to local water quality. Taken together, these results indicate that the regulators aim to ensure a certain water quality standard by inducing higher abatement efforts within the constraint of best available technology.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Islam, Asif Mohammed http://hdl.handle.net/1903/13070 2012-10-11T02:31:43Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Essays on Government Spending and Sustainable Growth Authors: Islam, Asif Mohammed Abstract: The first chapter examines the effect of the composition of federal and state government spending on SO2 air concentrations in the US. The results indicate that a reallocation of spending from RME to PME at the state and local level reduces sulfur dioxide concentrations while the composition of federal spending has no effect. A 10% percent increase in the share of PME spending reduces sulfur dioxide concentrations by the range of 3 to 5% for state and local spending. This is a significant effect since sulfur dioxide concentrations have been falling at an annual average rate of 5% from 1980 to 2008. The results are robust to various sensitivity checks. The second chapter documents the creation of a US government spending allocation database that provides new data on a set of disaggregated government spending categories covering all the states in the US for the period 1983-2008. The data allows for the comparison of federal versus state and local government spending over time on various spending items. This is achieved by categorizing and aggregating expenditures for over 1,500 federal programs and combining data on state and local government spending. The key challenge in separating federal and state and local government spending is the issue of double counting since part of state and local spending is from the federal government. The dataset presented will aid researchers in separately accounting for both state and local, as well as federal spending in future research. Finally, the third chapter examines fiscal spending and economic growth in the presence of imperfect markets. Political economy factors tend to induce many governments to spend on private goods (RME) to the detriment of spending on social and public goods (PME). This bias in spending patterns is particularly costly for economic growth when capital markets are imperfect. A theoretical model on government spending and growth is developed and linked quite closely to an empirical model. The empirical results fully corroborate the hypothesis that spending biases in favor of non-social subsidies (RME) reduce the rate of economic over the long run. The empirical findings are exceptionally robust.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Newcomb, Elisabeth Jo http://hdl.handle.net/1903/13026 2012-10-11T02:34:10Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: AN ANALYSIS OF REGULATORYAn analysis of regulatory decisions on food-use pesticides under the Food Quality and Protection Act Authors: Newcomb, Elisabeth Jo Abstract: To ensure the safety of older pesticides used in the United States, the EPA required the reregistration of pesticide uses which were first introduced before 1984. Using a dataset of reregistration outcomes for 2722 pesticide uses applied to food crops, I analyze the extent to which these decisions were determined by chronic health risks, pesticide expenditures, and other factors. I find that the dietary health risks associated with pesticides are had greater influence on actions to reduce dietary and occupational exposures than on pesticide cancellations. High population dietary risks are associated with higher rates of pesticide cancellations, though these results are insignificant. There is evidence that the EPA was more responsive to child and infant dietary risks: values above the EPA's threshold of concern were more than 10% more likely to be cancelled than those that were not (significant at the 10% level). The effects of cancer risks on EPA actions are more ambiguous, though this may be due to data limitations. The less safe pesticides are for handlers, the more often they are cancelled, but pesticide safety has a more significant correlation with reentry intervals. A one percent decrease in the safety of a pesticide to handlers predicts a reduction in reentry interval of 1.6 days (significant at the 5% level). Expenditures on individual pesticides have a strong relationship with pesticide reregistration, with an additional half million dollars in expenditures predicting a 2% increase in the probability of reregistration (significant at the 1% level). Expenditures are not so correlated with reentry intervals or changes in pesticide tolerances. After accounting for dietary risk and pesticide expenditures, Monsanto and Dow were most likely to have uses reregistered. Though there was some concern that small crops with low pesticide expenditures would suffer extra cancellations, small crop uses were no more likely to be cancelled than large crop uses. Mentions of individual pesticides in the media had no apparent relationship with the outcome of reregistration decisions.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Baggio, Michele http://hdl.handle.net/1903/12854 2012-11-20T21:55:56Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: ON THE ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL RANDOM SHOCKS: AN APPLICATION TO THE AMERICAN LOBSTER FISHERY OF LONG ISLAND SOUND Authors: Baggio, Michele Abstract: In this dissertation, I examine how environmental and anthropogenic factors and autocorrelated disturbances affect the dynamics of an exploited renewable resource. The analysis focuses on Long Island Sound (US) for which environmental factors play an important role. This objective is addressed first by investigating the relative importance of high temperatures, low dissolved oxygen, and overexploitation in the die-off experienced by the fishery after the fall of 1999. Second, I analyze the effects of temporally correlated environmental disturbances on the stationary distribution of the dynamics of a harvested population with an application to the LIS lobster fishery. In the fall of 1999, the American lobster population in Long Island Sound experienced a significant die-off. Biologists attributed the cause to a period of prolonged high temperatures that in concert with hypoxia suppressed lobsters' immune system making them more susceptible to diseases and infections. The relative importance of environmental factors like high temperatures and anthropogenic factors like overfishing and hypoxia is investigated. Data from annual trawl surveys and the fishing industry are combined to construct a model of lobster population dynamics and fishing effort. The model is used to investigate the relative importance of high temperatures, low dissolved oxygen, and incentives for more intensive fishing effort experienced in 1999. Simulations show that low dissolved oxygen and economically induced fishing pressure were the major factor underlying the die-off. These results indicate that stricter regulations of nutrient emissions and resolving institutional failure may be the most effective way to protect fisheries like the Long Island Sound lobster fishery. Furthermore, to mitigate the effects of global climate change, it may be advisable to impose stricter regulations of nutrient emissions in anticipation of more acute episodes of hypoxia. Standard models of renewable resource allocation under uncertainty typically assume that environmental disturbances are identically and independently distributed. When weather patterns impact environmental conditions, shocks may be serially correlated. This serial correlation has implications for the long run conservation of harvested renewable resources. This issue is analyzed by investigating the dynamics of a harvested, open-access renewable resource whose productivity is influenced by serially correlated random environmental disturbances. The main question that is addressed is: how does the expected value of stock escapement depends on the parameters that determine the distribution of environmental shocks? In answering this question I also characterize how the maximum and minimum escapement policy functions depend on these parameters. An application of the conceptual framework to the American lobster fishery of Long Island Sound is used to analyze these issues qualitatively and quantitatively. In the application, the model is parameterized using an econometric model of population dynamics for the Long Island Sound lobster fishery. Results show that shocks are negative correlated and transient so a high current productivity shock decreases the probability of high future shocks. Further, the results suggest that population variability is increasing in the degree of autocorrelation of the random shocks as well as the underline uncertainty of the environmental disturbances. As a result, population may experience ample fluctuations which could increase the likelihood of extinction. This suggests the adoption of management strategies that focus on maintaining a minimum population level and increasing the stability of the natural resource in the face of environmental variability.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z