Local environmental quality and interjurisdictional spillovers

We investigate how the quality of environmental public goods varies with the number of local governments, and show how this relationship depends on the existence of spillovers across jurisdictions. Exploiting exogenous variation in the natural topography of the USA, we show that metropolitan areas w...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hatfield, John William, Kosec, Katrina
Formato: Journal Article
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: John Wiley & Sons 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10568/147368
_version_ 1855538481650991104
author Hatfield, John William
Kosec, Katrina
author_browse Hatfield, John William
Kosec, Katrina
author_facet Hatfield, John William
Kosec, Katrina
author_sort Hatfield, John William
collection Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (CGSpace)
description We investigate how the quality of environmental public goods varies with the number of local governments, and show how this relationship depends on the existence of spillovers across jurisdictions. Exploiting exogenous variation in the natural topography of the USA, we show that metropolitan areas with more local governments have significantly lower air quality and significantly higher concentrations of toxic air pollutants that cause cancer and respiratory disease. By contrast, drinking water quality—a public good with relatively few spillovers—does not vary with the number of governments. Further, we find that areas with more local governments tend to have a higher density of employment in heavily polluting industries like electric power generation and chemical manufacturing, even after controlling for population density. This is consistent with jurisdictional fragmentation leading to the presence of more polluting industries.
format Journal Article
id CGSpace147368
institution CGIAR Consortium
language Inglés
publishDate 2019
publishDateRange 2019
publishDateSort 2019
publisher John Wiley & Sons
publisherStr John Wiley & Sons
record_format dspace
spelling CGSpace1473682024-10-25T08:05:01Z Local environmental quality and interjurisdictional spillovers Hatfield, John William Kosec, Katrina health environment federalism We investigate how the quality of environmental public goods varies with the number of local governments, and show how this relationship depends on the existence of spillovers across jurisdictions. Exploiting exogenous variation in the natural topography of the USA, we show that metropolitan areas with more local governments have significantly lower air quality and significantly higher concentrations of toxic air pollutants that cause cancer and respiratory disease. By contrast, drinking water quality—a public good with relatively few spillovers—does not vary with the number of governments. Further, we find that areas with more local governments tend to have a higher density of employment in heavily polluting industries like electric power generation and chemical manufacturing, even after controlling for population density. This is consistent with jurisdictional fragmentation leading to the presence of more polluting industries. 2019-07 2024-06-21T09:13:39Z 2024-06-21T09:13:39Z Journal Article https://hdl.handle.net/10568/147368 en Limited Access John Wiley & Sons Hatfield, John William; and Kosec, Katrina. 2019. Local environmental quality and interjurisdictional spillovers. Economica 86(343): 569-606. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecca.12277
spellingShingle health
environment
federalism
Hatfield, John William
Kosec, Katrina
Local environmental quality and interjurisdictional spillovers
title Local environmental quality and interjurisdictional spillovers
title_full Local environmental quality and interjurisdictional spillovers
title_fullStr Local environmental quality and interjurisdictional spillovers
title_full_unstemmed Local environmental quality and interjurisdictional spillovers
title_short Local environmental quality and interjurisdictional spillovers
title_sort local environmental quality and interjurisdictional spillovers
topic health
environment
federalism
url https://hdl.handle.net/10568/147368
work_keys_str_mv AT hatfieldjohnwilliam localenvironmentalqualityandinterjurisdictionalspillovers
AT koseckatrina localenvironmentalqualityandinterjurisdictionalspillovers