Environmental Regulation and Labor Demand

本研究将探讨环境管制对劳动力需求的影响。这些条例在生产技术方面引起的变化将影响发达国家制造业部门和发展中世界迅速增长的制造业部门的劳动力需求。全球制造业产出和贸易的增长引发了人们对经济增长对环境质量影响的担忧。预计发达国家和发展中国家的监管严格程度都将提高。反对监管的论点往往是在就业和环境质量之间权衡的基础上提出的。调查人员认为，现有对减少污染投资对劳动力需求影响的估计相互矛盾，存在许多偏差。经济学家对失业人数的估计可能会向下倾斜，因为观察到的大部分投资都是在预期面临低合规成本的公司进行监管改革的情况下进行的。公司提供的失业估计可能会偏高，因为他们忽略了同样的监管变化将对竞争对手的产出价格产生的影响。这个项目将提供对监管对劳动力需求的影响的估计，而不会有这些偏见。选择偏差将通过将监管作为工具变量来处理，从而限制人们对因监管变化而被迫投资于减少污染的公司的关注。企业估计的上行偏差通过分别估计劳动力需求的产出弹性和减少污染的资本和劳动力之间的边际技术替代率来解决。州和地方监管变化的数据将与工厂层面的污染减排投资数据和制造业普查的就业数据结合起来，以提供估计。为了确保这些工具具有解释力，将收集与两个监管项目相关的S竖琴变化的额外数据：南加州南海岸空气质量管理区和特拉华河流域项目。估计的影响将让政策制定者了解环境质量和制造业就业之间的权衡到底有多大。***

This research will investigate the effects of environmental regulation on the demand for labor. The changes that these regulations induce in the technology of production will affect labor demand in the manufacturing sectors of the developed world and in the rapidly growing manufacturing sectors of the developing world. Worldwide growth in manufacturing output and trade has prompted concern for the effect of economic growth on environmental quality. Regulatory stringency is expected to increase in both the developed and the developing world. Arguments against regulation are often framed in terms of a tradeoff between jobs and environmental quality. The investigators argue that existing estimates of the effect of investment in pollution abatement on labor demand are conflicting and subject to a number of biases. Estimates of job loss provided by economists are likely to be biased downwards, as much of the observed investment is conducted in anticipation of regulatory change by firms who face low compliance costs. Estimates of job loss provided by firms are likely to be biased upwards, as they ignore the effect that the same regulatory changes will have on their competitors prices for output. This project will provide estimates of the effect of regulation on labor demand free of these biases. The selection bias will be treated by using regulatory as instrumental variables, thus restricting attention to firms forced to invest in pollution abatement by regulatory changes. The upward bias in firms' estimates is addressed by separately estimating the output elasticities of labor demand and the marginal rate of technical substitution between pollution abatement capital and labor. Data on state and local regulatory changes will be combined with plant level data on pollution abatement investment and on employment from the Census of Manufactures to provide estimates. To ensure that the instruments have explanatory power, additional data will be collected on s harp changes associated with two regulatory programs: The South Coast Air Quality Management District in Southern California and the Delaware River Basin project. Estimated effects will inform policy makers about how large the tradeoff really is between environmental quality and manufacturing jobs. ***