Racial Disparities in Environmental Auditing

Anca Balietti and Tom Zeising

No 745, Working Papers from University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper investigates the role of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in advancing environmental justice through monitoring and enforcement efforts mandated by the Clean Air Act. Our analysis relies on a comprehensive dataset encompassing auditing information from all environmentally relevant plants between 2000 and 2018. Leveraging county-level variation in racial composition and environmental auditing, we find a substantial and persistent reduction in the proportion of inspected plants following increases in the share of non-White population. This decline coincides with a decrease in political activism, particularly among entities typically advocating for more stringent environmental protection.

Keywords: Environmental auditing; racial demographic shifts; Environmental justice; Political activism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-03-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
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