IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cen/wpaper/13-36.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Environmental Regulation And Industry Employment: A Reassessment

Author

Listed:
  • Anna Belova
  • Wayne B. Gray
  • Joshua Linn
  • Richard D. Morgenstern

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of environmental regulation on industry employment, using a structural model based on data from the Census Bureau’s Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures Survey. This model was developed in an earlier paper (Morgenstern, Pizer, and Shih (2002) - MPS). We extend MPS by examining additional industries and additional years. We find widely varying estimates across industries, including many implausibly large positive employment effects. We explore several possible explanations for these results, without reaching a satisfactory conclusion. Our results call into question the frequent use of the average impacts estimated by MPS as a basis for calculating the quantitative impacts of new environmental regulations on employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Anna Belova & Wayne B. Gray & Joshua Linn & Richard D. Morgenstern, 2013. "Environmental Regulation And Industry Employment: A Reassessment," Working Papers 13-36, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:13-36
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2013/CES-WP-13-36.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2013
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Randy A. Becker & Ronald J. Shadbegian, 2007. "Issues and Challenges in Measuring Environmental Expenditures by U.S. Manufacturing: The Redevelopment of the PACE Survey," NCEE Working Paper Series 200708, National Center for Environmental Economics, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, revised Jul 2007.
    3. Michael Greenstone & John A. List & Chad Syverson, 2011. "The Effects of Environmental Regulation on the Competiveness of U.S. Manufacturing," Working Papers 11-03, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    4. Ronald Shadbegian & Randy Becker, 2004. "A Change of PACE: Comparing the 1994 and 1999 Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures Surveys," Working Papers 04-09, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    5. Wolfgang Keller & Arik Levinson, 2002. "Pollution Abatement Costs and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows to U.S. States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 691-703, November.
    6. Ron S Jarmin & Javier Miranda, 2002. "The Longitudinal Business Database," Working Papers 02-17, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. Richard D. Morgenstern & William A. Pizer & Jhih-Shyang Shih, 2001. "The Cost Of Environmental Protection," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(4), pages 732-738, November.
    8. Rema Hanna, 2010. "US Environmental Regulation and FDI: Evidence from a Panel of US-Based Multinational Firms," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 158-189, July.
    9. Steven J. Davis & John C. Haltiwanger & Scott Schuh, 1998. "Job Creation and Destruction," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262540932, December.
    10. Michael Greenstone, 2002. "The Impacts of Environmental Regulations on Industrial Activity: Evidence from the 1970 and 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments and the Census of Manufactures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(6), pages 1175-1219, December.
    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. Consoli, Davide & Marin, Giovanni & Marzucchi, Alberto & Vona, Francesco, 2016. "Do green jobs differ from non-green jobs in terms of skills and human capital?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(5), pages 1046-1060.
    2. V. Kerry Smith, 2015. "Should Benefit–Cost Methods Take Account of High Unemployment? Symposium Introduction," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 9(2), pages 165-178.
    3. Ash, Michael & Boyce, James K., 2016. "Assessing the jobs-environment relationship with matched data from US EEOC and US EPA," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2016-03, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    4. Yao, Peng & Wang, Yutong & Liu, Jianxu, 2023. "Can water pollution control influence employment adjustment in enterprises?," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 384-397.
    5. Mengdi Liu & Bing Zhang & Qiang Geng, 2018. "Corporate pollution control strategies and labor demand: evidence from China’s manufacturing sector," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 298-326, June.
    6. Feng Liu & Kangning Xu & Meina Zheng, 2018. "The Effect of Environmental Regulation on Employment in China: Empirical Research Based on Individual-Level Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-23, July.

    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. Shital Sharma, 2013. "Environmental Regulation, Abatement, and Productivity: A Frontier Analysis," Working Papers 13-51, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    2. Becker, Randy A. & Pasurka, Carl & Shadbegian, Ronald J., 2013. "Do environmental regulations disproportionately affect small businesses? Evidence from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 523-538.
    3. Becker, Randy A. & Pasurka, Carl & Shadbegian, Ronald J., 2013. "Do environmental regulations disproportionately affect small businesses? Evidence from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 523-538.
    4. Fernando Broner & Paula Bustos & Vasco Carvalho, 2011. "Sources of comparative advantage in polluting industries," Economics Working Papers 1331, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Dec 2019.
    5. Gabriel Natividad, 2016. "Quotas, Productivity, and Prices: The Case of Anchovy Fishing," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 220-257, March.
    6. Xiaoyang Li & Yue Maggie Zhou, 2016. "Offshoring Pollution While Offshoring Production," Working Papers 16-09r, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. Fan, Haichao & Peng, Yuchao & Wang, Huanhuan & Xu, Zhiwei, 2021. "Greening through finance?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    8. Xiaoyang Li & Yue Maggie Zhou, 2016. "Offshoring Pollution While Offshoring Production," Working Papers 16-09, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    9. Xiaoyang Li & Yue M. Zhou, 2017. "Offshoring Pollution while Offshoring Production?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(11), pages 2310-2329, November.
    10. Cui, Jingbo & Lapan, Harvey E. & Moschini, GianCarlo, 2012. "Are exporters more environmentally friendly than non-exporters? Theory and evidence," ISU General Staff Papers 201210040700001076, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    11. Joseph S. Shapiro & Reed Walker, 2018. "Why Is Pollution from US Manufacturing Declining? The Roles of Environmental Regulation, Productivity, and Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(12), pages 3814-3854, December.
    12. Lu, Yunguo & Zhang, Lin, 2022. "National mitigation policy and the competitiveness of Chinese firms," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    13. Shinsuke Tanaka & Kensuke Teshima & Eric Verhoogen, 2022. "North-South Displacement Effects of Environmental Regulation: The Case of Battery Recycling," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 271-288, September.
    14. Michael Gallaher & Cynthia Morgan & Ronald J. Shadbegian, 2008. "Redesign of the 2005 Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditure Survey," NCEE Working Paper Series 200801, National Center for Environmental Economics, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, revised Jan 2008.
    15. Christopher Hansman & Jonas Hjort & Gianmarco León, 2015. "Firm's response and unintended health consequences of industrial regulations," Economics Working Papers 1469, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    16. Gray, Wayne B. & Shadbegian, Ronald J. & Wang, Chunbei & Meral, Merve, 2014. "Do EPA regulations affect labor demand? Evidence from the pulp and paper industry," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 188-202.
    17. Koch, Nicolas & Basse Mama, Houdou, 2019. "Does the EU Emissions Trading System induce investment leakage? Evidence from German multinational firms," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 479-492.
    18. Kneller, Richard & Manderson, Edward, 2012. "Environmental regulations and innovation activity in UK manufacturing industries," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 211-235.
    19. Ralf Martin & Laure B. de Preux & Ulrich J. Wagner, 2009. "The impacts of the Climate Change Levy on business: evidence from microdata," GRI Working Papers 6, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    20. Zhu, Junming & Ruth, Matthias, 2015. "Relocation or reallocation: Impacts of differentiated energy saving regulation on manufacturing industries in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 119-133.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cen:wpaper:13-36. 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: Dawn Anderson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesgvus.html .

    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.