band Labor Demand: Evidence from the South Coast Air Basin

Eli Berman and Linda Bui

No 6299, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The devolved nature of environmental regulation provides an excellent opportunity for" estimating the effects of regulation on employment, by generating rich variation in regulation" across regions and over time. We exploit this variation using direct measures of regulation and" plant data. We estimate the employment effects of an unprecedented increase in air quality" regulation in the Los Angeles region, using unregulated plants in other regions years for comparison. While environmental regulation is generally thought to reduce" employment, economic theory is ambiguous on this point, since pollution abatement technologies" may be labor using. We find that air quality regulation induced very expensive investments in" abatement capital for individual plants, especially for oil refineries. Despite these high costs we" find no evidence that environmental regulation decreased labor demand induced plant exit and dissuaded plant entry. If anything, air quality regulation probably inc-" reased employment slightly.

JEL-codes: C2 C8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-12
Note: LS PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published as Berman, Eli and Linda T. M. Bui. "Environmental Regulation And Productivity: Evidence From Oil Refineries," Review of Economics and Statistics, 2001, v83(3,Aug), 498-510.

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