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Do Environmental Regulations Disproportionately Affect Small Businesses? Evidence from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures Survey

Randy Becker, Carl Pasurka and Ronald J. Shadbegian

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: It remains an open question whether the impact of environmental regulations differs by the size of the business. Such differences might be expected because of statutory, enforcement, and/or compliance asymmetries. Here, we consider the net effect of these three asymmetries, by estimating the relationship between plant size and pollution abatement expenditures, using establishment-level data on U.S. manufacturers from the Census Bureau’s Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures (PACE) surveys of 1974-1982, 1984-1986, 1988-1994, 1999, and 2005, combined with data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures and Census of Manufactures. We model establishments’ PAOC intensity - that is, their pollution abatement operating costs per unit of economic activity - as a function of establishment size, industry, and year. Our results show that PAOC intensity increases with establishment size. We also find that larger firms spend more per unit of output than do smaller firms.

Keywords: environmental regulation; costs; business size; U.S. manufacturing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L51 L6 Q52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2012-09, Revised 2013-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-ent, nep-env, nep-reg and nep-res
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2012/CES-WP-12-25R.pdf Revised version, 2013 (application/pdf)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2012/CES-WP-12-25.pdf First version, 2012 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do environmental regulations disproportionately affect small businesses? Evidence from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey (2013) Downloads
Working Paper: Do Environmental Regulations Disproportionately Affect Small Businesses? Evidence from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures Survey (2013) Downloads
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:12-25

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