IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/publus/v51y2021i2p238-261..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Environmental Race to the Bottom? “No More Stringent” Laws in the American States

Author

Listed:
  • Neal D Woods

Abstract

Many American states have adopted laws designed to prevent environmental agencies from regulating pollution emissions more stringently than is required by federal statute. This study leverages variation in the timing and breadth of state adoption of these “No More Stringent” (NMS) laws to examine the claim that interstate competition for mobile capital leads state governments to relax regulatory standards, resulting in an environmental race to the bottom. The results indicate that the diffusion of NMS laws is driven by two forms of interstate economic competition, a policy competition effect that operates primarily among contiguous neighbors and a cost competition effect that operates primarily among a broader set of economic peers. These findings provide new empirical support for the environmental race to the bottom argument, and suggest new challenges for the use of cooperative federalism arrangements that involve state implementation of federal programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Neal D Woods, 2021. "An Environmental Race to the Bottom? “No More Stringent” Laws in the American States," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 51(2), pages 238-261.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:51:y:2021:i:2:p:238-261.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/publius/pjaa031
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John A. List & Daniel L. Millimet & Per G. Fredriksson & W. Warren McHone, 2003. "Effects of Environmental Regulations on Manufacturing Plant Births: Evidence from a Propensity Score Matching Estimator," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 944-952, November.
    2. Barry Rabe, 2007. "Environmental Policy and the Bush Era: The Collision Between the Administrative Presidency and State Experimentation," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 37(3), pages 413-431, Summer.
    3. Charles R. Shipan & Craig Volden, 2008. "The Mechanisms of Policy Diffusion," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 840-857, October.
    4. Berry, Frances Stokes & Berry, William D., 1990. "State Lottery Adoptions as Policy Innovations: An Event History Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(2), pages 395-415, June.
    5. Neal D. Woods & David M. Konisky & Ann O'M. Bowman, 2009. "You Get What You Pay For: Environmental Policy and Public Health," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 39(1), pages 95-116, Winter.
    6. David M. Konisky, 2007. "Regulatory Competition and Environmental Enforcement: Is There a Race to the Bottom?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(4), pages 853-872, October.
    7. Denise Scheberle, 2005. "The Evolving Matrix of Environmental Federalism and Intergovernmental Relationships," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 35(1), pages 69-86, Winter.
    8. Sarah L. Stafford, 2000. "The Impact of Environmental Regulations on the Location of Firms in the Hazardous Waste Management Industry," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 76(4), pages 569-589.
    9. Fredriksson, Per G. & Millimet, Daniel L., 2002. "Strategic Interaction and the Determination of Environmental Policy across U.S. States," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 101-122, January.
    10. Henry N. Butler, 1996. "Using Federalism to Improve Environmental Policy," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 53022, September.
    11. Carter, David B. & Signorino, Curtis S., 2010. "Back to the Future: Modeling Time Dependence in Binary Data," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(3), pages 271-292, July.
    12. Theodore M. Crone, 1999. "Using state indexes to define economic regions in the U.S," Working Papers 99-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    13. David M. Konisky & Neal D. Woods, 2016. "Environmental Policy, Federalism, and the Obama Presidency," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 46(3), pages 366-391.
    14. Boushey, Graeme, 2016. "Targeted for Diffusion? How the Use and Acceptance of Stereotypes Shape the Diffusion of Criminal Justice Policy Innovations in the American States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 110(1), pages 198-214, February.
    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. Hwang, Sanghyun, 2022. "Is There an Environmental Race to the Bottom in an Endogenous Growth Model of Interjurisdictional Competition?," Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 63(1), pages 24-50, June.
    2. Neal D. Woods, 2021. "The State of State Environmental Policy Research: A Thirty‐Year Progress Report," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(3), pages 347-369, May.
    3. Neal D. Woods, 2022. "Regulatory competition, administrative discretion, and environmental policy implementation," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 39(4), pages 486-511, July.
    4. Lin Wang & Yugang He & Renhong Wu, 2024. "The Green Engine of Growth: Assessing the Influence of Renewable Energy Consumption and Environmental Policy on China’s Economic Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(8), pages 1-25, April.
    5. Mitch Kunce, 2023. "Decentralized Pollution Standard Setting with Agglomeration Forces Present in a Model of Specific Firm Mobility," Business & Entrepreneurship Journal, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 12(1), pages 1-3.

    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. Neal D. Woods, 2021. "The State of State Environmental Policy Research: A Thirty‐Year Progress Report," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(3), pages 347-369, May.
    2. Srinivas C. Parinandi, 2020. "Policy Inventing and Borrowing among State Legislatures," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(4), pages 852-868, October.
    3. Schneider, Andrea, 2017. "Policy diffusion and the competition for mobile resources," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168203, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Neal D. Woods, 2022. "Regulatory competition, administrative discretion, and environmental policy implementation," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 39(4), pages 486-511, July.
    5. Steven J. Balla & Zhoudan Xie, 2023. "The durability of governance reform: A two‐wave audit of notice and comment policymaking in China," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(2), pages 549-569, April.
    6. Sun, Hao & Su, Jun & Ma, Liang, 2021. "The diffusion of the utility tunnel policy: Evidence from Chinese cities," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    7. Schaffer, Lena Maria & Bernauer, Thomas, 2014. "Explaining government choices for promoting renewable energy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 15-27.
    8. Han, Chao & Tian, Xian-Liang, 2022. "Less pollution under a more centralized environmental system: Evidence from vertical environmental reforms in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    9. Armstrong, John H., 2019. "Modeling effective local government climate policies that exceed state targets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 15-26.
    10. Juan Tang & Fangming Qin, 2022. "Analyzing the impact of local government competition on green total factor productivity from the factor market distortion perspective: based on the three stage DEA model," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(12), pages 14298-14326, December.
    11. Katie Jo Black & Shawn J. McCoy & Jeremy G. Weber, 2018. "When Externalities Are Taxed: The Effects and Incidence of Pennsylvania’s Impact Fee on Shale Gas Wells," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(1), pages 107-153.
    12. Galinato, Gregmar I. & Chouinard, Hayley H., 2018. "Strategic interaction and institutional quality determinants of environmental regulations," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 114-132.
    13. Amy Y. Li, 2017. "Covet Thy Neighbor or “Reverse Policy Diffusion”? State Adoption of Performance Funding 2.0," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 58(7), pages 746-771, November.
    14. Sailian Xia & Daming You & Zhihua Tang & Bo Yang, 2021. "Analysis of the Spatial Effect of Fiscal Decentralization and Environmental Decentralization on Carbon Emissions under the Pressure of Officials’ Promotion," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-21, March.
    15. Felix Strebel & Thomas Widmer, 2012. "Visibility and facticity in policy diffusion: going beyond the prevailing binarity," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 45(4), pages 385-398, December.
    16. Thais NUNEZ-ROCHA & Inmaculada MARTíNEZ-ZARZOSO, 2018. "Is National Environmental Legislation Affecting Emissions?," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 2505, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.
    17. Xiaohan Li & Yang Lv & Md Nazirul Islam Sarker & Xun Zeng, 2022. "Assessment of Critical Diffusion Factors of Public–Private Partnership and Social Policy: Evidence from Mainland Prefecture-Level Cities in China," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-15, February.
    18. Le Gallo, Julie & Ndiaye, Youba, 2021. "Environmental expenditure interactions among OECD countries, 1995–2017," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 244-255.
    19. Weixing Liu & Hongtao Yi, 2020. "What Affects the Diffusion of New Energy Vehicles Financial Subsidy Policy? Evidence from Chinese Cities," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(3), pages 1-15, January.
    20. Lai, Yu-Bong, 2019. "Environmental policy competition and heterogeneous capital endowments," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 107-119.

    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:oup:publus:v:51:y:2021:i:2:p:238-261.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/publius .

    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.