Environmental Regulation and U.S. Manufacturing Location

本研究的目的是分析1963年至1992年间美国制造业活动地点的变化，以了解这些变化是否受到各州环境法规差异的影响。 人口普查局的纵向研究数据库每五年提供一次所有制造厂的信息。 使用这些数据，每个时期的每个活跃工厂被分类为开放，关闭，扩张或收缩。 这些数据被汇总到州一级，以创建因变量，例如在五年的时间间隔内，一个州新开的工厂数量。 估计的解释变量包括监管措施，如执法活动，污染减排支出，国家法律，以及其他因素影响的位置，如税收，工资和工会。 这项研究很重要，因为它将开发一个新的国家级制造活动的数据集，它将有助于量化国家实施的环境法规对制造活动的位置的影响。

The purpose of this project is to analyze changes in the location of manufacturing activity in the U.S. between 1963 and 1992 in order to see whether these changes are influenced by differences in environmental regulations among states. The Census Bureau's longitudinal Research Database provides information at five-year intervals for all manufacturing plants. Using these data, each active plant in each period is categorized as opening, closing, expanding, or contracting. These data are aggregated up to the state-level to create dependent variables such as the number of newly opened plants in a state during a five year interval. The explanatory variables for the estimation include regulatory measures such as enforcement activity, pollution abatement expenditures, and state laws, and other factors influencing location such as taxes, wages, and unionization. This research is important because it will develop a new state-level data set on manufacturing activity, and it will help quantify the impact of state imposed environmental regulations on the location of manufacturing activity.