The Impacts of Environmental Regulations on Industrial Activity: Evidence from the 1970 & 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments and the Census of Manufactures

Michael Greenstone

No 8484, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper estimates the effects of environmental regulations on industrial activity. The analysis is conducted with the most comprehensive data available on both regulations from the Clean Air Act Amendments' division of counties into pollutant-specific nonattainment and attainment categories and manufacturing activity from the 1.75 million plant observations that comprise the 1967-87 Censuses of Manufactures. Emitters of the controlled pollutants are subject to greater regulatory oversight in nonattainment counties. I find that in the first 15 years after the Amendments became law (1972- 1987), nonattainment counties (relative to attainment ones) lost approximately 590,000 jobs, $37 billion in capital stock, and $75 billion (1987$) of output in pollution intensive industries. These estimates are derived from a statistical model for plant-level growth that controls for plant fixed effects, unrestricted industry shocks, and unrestricted county shocks. Importantly these findings are robust across many specifications, and the effects are apparent across a wide range of polluting industries. Although the decline in manufacturing activity was substantial in nonattainment counties, it was modest compared to the size of the entire manufacturing sector.

Date: 2001-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-lam, nep-law, nep-mic and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Published as Greenstone, Michael. "The Impacts Of Environmental Regulations On Industrial Activity: Evidence From The 1970 And 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments And The Census Of Manufactures," Journal of Political Economy, 2002, v110(6,Dec), 1175-1219.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8484.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8484

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8484

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().