Industrial Productivity and Air Quality Regulation

9422440亨德森这个项目有两个相互关联的部分。第一个研究考察了空气质量监管对公司决策的影响，这些决策涉及工厂的位置、生产计划和工厂的规模。该项目测试了一些假设，即空气质量法规的实施导致企业将工厂从污染较严重的地区转移到污染较少的地区，将工厂从法规执行更严格的州转移到条件更宽松的州，隐含地重新安排一天中的经济活动，以帮助将极端值空气质量读数降至最低，并缩小工厂规模，以避免监管审查。这项研究的结果将提高我们对环境监管活动的意外和整体影响的理解。具体地说，这项调查将有助于表明《清洁空气法》是减少排放，还是只是转移排放。第二部分涉及对工厂生产率决定因素和企业选址决策的更广泛的审查。这项工作的重点首先是确定动态外部性的存在，这种外部性有助于将多年来的植物集群绑定到相同的位置，然后量化动态外部性的大小和长度(滞后结构)。动态外部性是决定工厂的机动性和生产率以及了解跨空间和公司内部生产组织的关键组成部分。该项目使用在以前的NSF项目下收集的EPA和县商业模式数据，以及通过EPA和波士顿地区办事处研究数据中心的人口普查局经济研究中心(CES)获得的纵向个体公司和工厂数据。

9422440 Henderson This project has two interrelated parts. The first examines the effect of air quality regulation on decisions of firms concerning the location of their plants, the scheduling of production, and the size of their plants. The project tests the hypotheses that implementation of air quality regulations has led firms to move plants from more polluted locations to less polluted locations, move plants from states with more intense implementation of regulations to those with easier conditions, implicitly reschedule economic activity over the course of the day to help minimize extreme value air quality readings, and downsize plants to avoid regulatory scrutiny. The results of this study will improve our understanding of the unintended and overall effects of environmental regulatory activity. Specifically, the investigation will help show whether the Clean Air Act reduces emissions or just moves them around. The second part involves a more extensive examination of plant productivity determinants and location decisions of firms. The focus of the work is first on establishing the existence of dynamic externalities which help bind clusters of plants to the same locations over the years and then on quantifying the magnitude and length (lag structure) to dynamic externalities. Dynamic externalities are a critical component to determining the mobility and productivity of plants and to understanding the organization of production across space and within corporations. This project uses EPA and County Business Patterns data collected under prior NSF projects and longitudinal individual firm and plant data, available through the EPA and through the Center for Economic Studies (CES) of the Census Bureau in the Research Data Center at the Boston regional office.