Image from Google Jackets

Socioeconomic Disparities in Privatized Pollution Remediation: Evidence from Toxic Chemical Spills

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: American Economic Journal: Applied Economics; 2024Description: 219-249ISSN:
  • 1945-7782
Subject(s): Online resources: Summary: Governments often privatize the administration of regulations to third-party specialists paid for by the regulated parties. We study how the resulting conflict of interest can have unintended consequences for the distributional impacts of regulation. In Massachusetts, the party responsible for hazardous waste contamination must hire a licensed contractor to quantify the environmental severity. We find that contractors' evaluations favor their clients, exhibiting substantial score bunching just below thresholds that determine government oversight of the remediation. Client favoritism is more pronounced in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods and is associated with inferior remediation quality, highlighting a novel channel for inequities in pollution exposure.
Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.
Star ratings
    Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)
Holdings
Item type Current library Vol info Status Barcode
Article Index Article Index Dr VKRV Rao Library Vol. 16, No. 3 Not for loan AI396

Governments often privatize the administration of regulations to third-party specialists paid for by the regulated parties. We study how the resulting conflict of interest can have unintended consequences for the distributional impacts of regulation. In Massachusetts, the party responsible for hazardous waste contamination must hire a licensed contractor to quantify the environmental severity. We find that contractors' evaluations favor their clients, exhibiting substantial score bunching just below thresholds that determine government oversight of the remediation. Client favoritism is more pronounced in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods and is associated with inferior remediation quality, highlighting a novel channel for inequities in pollution exposure.

There are no comments on this title.

to post a comment.
Share