What we Know About What we Know About Toxic Polluter Behavior from the TRI: Evidence from (almost) Twenty Years of TRI Data in The Petroleum Refining Industry

Linda Bui

No 45, Working Papers from Brandeis University, Department of Economics and International Business School

Abstract: Using the TRI to understand polluting behavior can pose challenges due to the limited number of chemicals that are reported, the potential confounding effect of several regulatory programs that affect TRI substances, the lack of output information, and judgments regarding appropriate measures of releases. In an effort both to help illustrate and clarify these issues, I study TRI data from the petroleum refining industry using a balanced panel of 199 refineries from 1988-2003. I find that (1) although both aggregate and toxicity-weighted releases exhibited large declines over the period of study, the pattern of releases were substantially different, strongly suggesting that any inference that is drawn from the data will be sensitive to the measure of releases; and (2) regulatory programs can affect TRI releases both directly and indirectly. The direct effect occurs because emissions of several TRI substances are simultaneously regulated under the CAA and CWA (and other environmental programs and policies. The indirect effect occurs when regulatory programs induce changes in the set of inputs or the production process, leading to changes in TRI releases of substances that are not directly regulated under these programs. Thus, simply “netting-out” CAA and CWA substances from the TRI will not necessarily remove the confounding effects of these regulatory programs.

Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2012-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
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http://www.brandeis.edu/economics/RePEc/brd/doc/Brandeis_WP45.pdf First version, 2012 (application/pdf)

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