U.S. Trade in Toxics: The Case of Chlorodifluoromethane (HCFC-22)
September 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-29
Abstract
This paper explores whether environmental regulation affects where pollution-intensive goods are produced. Here we examine chlorodifluoromethane (HCFC-22), a chemical designated as toxic in 1994 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Trends show a decline in the number of domestic producers of this chemical, a decline in the number of manufacturing facilities using it, and an increase in the number (and share) of facilities claiming to import it. Transaction-level trade data show an increase in the import of HCFC-22 imports since its TRI listing ' an increase that is faster than that of all non-TRI listed chemicals. This is suggestive of a pollution haven effect. Meanwhile, we find that the vast majority of U.S. imports of HCFC-22 come from OECD countries. However, an increase in the share of imports from non-OECD countries since the chemical's listing suggests a shift of production to countries with more lax environmental standards. While the findings here are suggestive of regulatory effects, more rigorous analyses are needed to rule out other possible explanations.
Document Tags and Keywords
Keywords
Keywords are automatically generated using KeyBERT, a powerful and innovative
keyword extraction tool that utilizes BERT embeddings to ensure high-quality and contextually relevant
keywords.
By analyzing the content of working papers, KeyBERT identifies terms and phrases that capture the essence of the
text, highlighting the most significant topics and trends. This approach not only enhances searchability but
provides connections that go beyond potentially domain-specific author-defined keywords.
:
import,
export,
produce,
tariff,
regulated,
regulation,
regulatory,
emission,
pollution,
environmental regulation,
epa,
environmental,
pollutant,
chemical,
polluting,
supplier,
custom
Tags
Tags are automatically generated using a pretrained language model from spaCy, which excels at
several tasks, including entity tagging.
The model is able to label words and phrases by part-of-speech,
including "organizations." By filtering for frequent words and phrases labeled as "organizations", papers are
identified to contain references to specific institutions, datasets, and other organizations.
:
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
Toxics Release Inventory,
Environmental Protection Agency,
North American Free Trade Agreement,
Harmonized System,
Customs and Border Protection
Similar Working Papers
Similarity between working papers are determined by an unsupervised neural
network model
know as Doc2Vec.
Doc2Vec is a model that represents entire documents as fixed-length vectors, allowing for the
capture of semantic meaning in a way that relates to the context of words within the document. The model learns to
associate a unique vector with each document while simultaneously learning word vectors, enabling tasks such as
document classification, clustering, and similarity detection by preserving the order and structure of words. The
document vectors are compared using cosine similarity/distance to determine the most similar working papers.
Papers identified with 🔥 are in the top 20% of similarity.
The 10 most similar working papers to the working paper 'U.S. Trade in Toxics: The Case of Chlorodifluoromethane (HCFC-22)' are listed below in order of similarity.
-
Working PaperPollution Havens and the Trade in Toxic Chemicals: Evidence from U.S. Trade Flows🔥
June 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-12
Does increased environmental protection decrease the emission of pollutants or merely displace them? Using newly available trade data, this study examines the flows of a panel of chemicals designated as toxic by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Estimates from a differences-in-differences model indicate a significant increase in net imports when a chemical is listed on TRI, which suggests production offshoring. Furthermore, I find that increased imports due to this 'pollution haven effect' are sourced disproportionately from poorer countries, which are likely to have lower environmental protection standards. At the same time, I observe the bulk of American trade in toxic chemicals occurs with other wealthy countries, which may be attributed to the capital intensity of chemical production.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperOFFSHORING POLLUTION WHILE OFFSHORING PRODUCTION*
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-09R
We examine the role of firm strategy in the global combat against pollution. We find that U.S. plants release less toxic emissions when their parent firm imports more from low-wage countries (LWCs). Consistent with the Pollution Haven Hypothesis, goods imported by U.S. firms from LWCs are in more pollution-intensive industries; U.S. plants shift production to less pollution-intensive industries, produce less waste, and spend less on pollution abatement when their parent imports more from LWCs. The negative impact of LWC imports on emissions is stronger for U.S. plants located in counties with greater institutional pressure for environmental performance, but weaker for more-capable U.S. plants and firms. These results highlight the role of local institutions and firm capability in explaining firms' choice of offshoring and environmental strategy.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperGlobalization and Price Dispersion: Evidence from U.S. Trade Flows
March 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-07
Historically, the integration of international markets has corresponded with decreasing prices for traded goods due to higher competition among suppliers, scale economies, and consumption demand. In recent years, product differentiation and multinational firm pricing behavior across markets and between suppliers make it difficult to assess the degree to which this still occurs. Using a confidential panel dataset comprising the universe of U.S. import trade transactions between 1992 and 2007, this paper explores the change in prices for imported commodities across American trade partners. Overall price dispersion appears to decline, albeit unevenly, over time; nevertheless, there is considerable heterogeneity within commodity groups, geographic regions, and income levels, which may owe to increased product and quality differentiation within commodity categories. Unusually, after controlling for gravity trade factors, trade openness and extensive measures of globalization are positively associated with price dispersion, which suggests a more disaggregated approach both at the commodity and firm level to account for these differences.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperPollution Abatement Expenditure by U.S. Manufacturing Plants: Do Community Characteristics Matter?
November 2003
Working Paper Number:
CES-03-18
A number of previous studies have demonstrated the impact of community characteristics on environmental outcomes such as local pollution levels and the siting of noxious facilities. If certain groups are indeed exposed to higher levels of air pollution, it may be due to a greater concentration of air polluters in those communities and/or facilities in those areas investing less in air pollution abatement. This paper examines the latter, using establishment-level data on manufacturing plants from the U.S. Census Bureau'''s Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures (PACE) survey. The empirical formulation herein allows plant-level air pollution abatement operating costs to depend on an array of community characteristics common to this literature. After controlling for establishment characteristics and federal, state, and local regulation, some of these local factors are found to have had an additional effect on air pollution abatement expenditures. In particular, populations with higher homeownership rates and higher per capita income enjoyed greater pollution abatement activity from their nearby plants. Meanwhile, establishments in communities where manufacturing accounted for a greater share of local employment had less pollution abatement spending, suggesting a local constituency that is more resistant to additional regulation. Political ideology is also found to play a role, with plants in areas with larger concentrations of Democrats having more expenditure on air pollution abatement, all else being equal. There is little evidence that race and ethnicity matter when it comes to the pollution abatement behavior of the most pollution-intensive facilities. The findings of this paper support those of a number of recent studies.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperPublic Disclosure of Private Information as a Tool for Regulating Environmental Emissions: Firm-Level Responses by Petroleum Refineries to the Toxics Release Inventory
October 2005
Working Paper Number:
CES-05-13
I investigate whether, as is commonly believed -- and if so how -- firm disclosure of so-called "toxic" releases, required since 1987 by the federal "Toxics Release Inventory ("TRI"), has brought about the reductions in toxic releases that have occurred since that time. Existing literature, consisting principally of event studies of stock market returns, suggest that dirty firms experience abnormal negative returns. Using a micro-level data set that links TRI releases to plant level Census data for petroleum refineries, I study plant-level behavior, exploiting state variation in toxics regulations, and exploring the relationship between TRI releases and concomitant regulation of non-toxic pollutants. I find that, although TRI induced public disclosure may have contributed to the decline in reported toxic releases, that alone has not been the cause of those reductions: the evidence is strong that changes in toxic emission intensity are a byproduct of more traditional command and control regulation of emissions of non-toxic pollutants. I find that (1) since 1987, refineries have become substantially cleaner in terms of over-all toxic releases; (2) the clean-up has not occurred through substitution away from TRI listed substances as inputs or alteration in the mix of outputs; and (3) refineries in states with more stringent supplemental regulation of toxics (e.g. with specific state-wide goals for toxic reductions) have significantly lower toxic emission intensity levels than refineries in other states. I find also that (4) TRI air releases are highly correlated with levels of criteria air pollution; (5) both toxic pollution levels and intensity fall with increases in pollution abatement (operating and maintenance) expenditures for non-toxic air pollution; and (6) TRI air releases are affected by being in more stringent regulatory regions for the criteria air pollutants. Finally, I link my data-set with CRSP data to re-evaluate the effect of TRI reporting on company stock market valuation, correcting for a methodological shortcoming (stemming from the fact that all reporting firms face a common event window) of prior event studies of the impact of the TRI. Correcting for that shortcoming, I find that (7) the evidence of negative abnormal returns around TRI reporting dates for petroleum companies is not significant. My findings suggest that the most probable mechanism through which TRI reporting may induce firms to clean up is local and state governmental use of TRI disclosures. They suggest also not only that the perceived effectiveness of TRI regulation has been overstated, but perhaps more importantly that the benefits of command and control regulation of non-toxic pollutants have been underestimated.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperMeasuring The Impact Of The Toxics Release Inventory: Evidence From Manufacturing Plant Births
March 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-07
The Toxics Release Inventory was the first major initiative to take a disclosurebased approach to environmental regulation and has served as the model for several other disclosure-based environmental policies. Yet the magnitude of its direct impacts on industrial manufacturing outcomes has not been established. I use Census Bureau micro-data to estimate the impacts of the Toxics Release Inventory on the opening of new manufacturing plants. I find that on average, counties that were found to be among the dirtiest in the country, in terms of toxic emissions, experienced a decrease in 'dirty' plant births and an even larger increase in 'clean' plant births. Furthermore, the magnitude of this shift is closely related to per capita income in the affected coun- ties - the effect is strongest in high-income communities and is reversed in low-income communities. I discuss the implications for information-based environmental policies.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperAre All Trade Protection Policies Created Equal? Empirical Evidence for Nonequivalent Market Power Effects of Tariffs and Quotas
September 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-27
The steel industry has been protected by a wide variety of trade policies, both tariff- and quota-based, over the past decades. This extensive heterogeneity in trade protection provides the opportunity to examine the well-established theoretical literature predicting nonequivalent effects of tariffs and quotas on domestic firms' market power. Robust to a variety of empirical specifications with U.S. Census data on the population of U.S. steel plants from 1967-2002, we find evidence for significant market power effects for binding quota-based protection, but not for tariff-based protection. There is only weak evidence that antidumping protection increases market power.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperImport Competition from and Offshoring to Low-Income Countries: Implications for Employment and Wages at U.S. Domestic Manufacturers
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-31
Using confidential linked firm-level trade transactions and census data between 1997 and 2012, we provide new evidence on how American firms without foreign affiliates adjust employment and wages as they adapt to import competition from low-income countries. We provide stylized facts on the input sourcing strategies of these domestic firms, contrasting them with multinationals operating in the same industry. We then investigate how changes in firm input purchases from low-income countries as well as domestic market import penetration from these sources are correlated with changes in employment and wages at surviving domestic firms. Greater offshoring by domestic firms from low-income countries correlates with larger declines in manufacturing employment and in the average production workers' wage. Given the negative association, however, the estimated magnitudes are small, even for a narrow measure of offshoring that includes only intermediate goods. Import penetration of U.S. markets from these sources is associated with relatively larger changes in employment for arm's length importing firms, but has no significant correlation with employment changes at firms that do not trade. Given differences in the degree of both offshoring and import penetration, we find substantial variation across industries in the magnitude of changes associated with low-income country imports.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe Effects of Environmental Regulation on the Competiveness of U.S. Manufacturing
January 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-03
Whether and to what extent environmental regulations influence the competitiveness of firms remains a hotly debated issue. Using detailed production data from tens of thousands of U.S. manufacturing plants drawn from Annual Survey of Manufactures, we estimate the effects of environmental regulations'captured by the Clean Air Act Amendments' division of counties into pollutant-specific nonattainment and attainment categories'on manufacturing plants' total factor productivity (TFP) levels. We find that among surviving polluting plants, a nonattainment designation is associated with a roughly 2.6 percent decline in TFP. The regulations governing ozone have particularly discernable effects on productivity, though effects are also seen among particulates and sulfur dioxide emitters. Carbon monoxide nonattainment, on the other hand, appears to increase measured TFP, though this appears to be concentrated among refineries. When we apply corrections for two likely sources of positive bias in these estimates (price mismeasurement and sample selection on survival), we estimate that the total TFP loss for polluting plants in nonattaining counties is 4.8 percent. This corresponds to an annual lost output in the manufacturing sector of roughly $14.7 billion in 1987 dollars ($24.4 billion in 2009 dollars). These costs have important implications for both the intensity and location of firm expansions.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperAN 'ALGORITHMIC LINKS WITH PROBABILITIES' CONCORDANCE FOR TRADEMARKS: FOR DISAGGREGATED ANALYSIS OF TRADEMARK & ECONOMIC DATA
September 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-49
Trademarks (TMs) shape the competitive landscape of markets for goods and services in all countries through branding and conveying information and quality inherent in products. Yet, researchers are largely unable to conduct rigorous empirical analysis of TMs in the modern economy because TM data and economic activity data are organized differently and cannot be analyzed jointly at the industry or sectoral level. We propose an 'Algorithmic Links with Probabilities' (ALP) approach to match TM data to economic data and enable these data to speak to each other. Specifically, we construct a NICE Class Level concordance that maps TM data into trade and industry categories forward and backward. This concordance allows researchers to analyze differences in TM usage across both economic and TM sectors. In this paper, we apply this ALP concordance for TMs to characterize patterns in TM applications across countries, industries, income levels and more. We also use the concordance to investigate some of the key determinants of international technology transfer by comparing bilateral TM applications and bilateral patent applications. We conclude with a discussion of possible extensions of this work, including deeper indicator-level concordances and further analyses that are possible once TM data are linked with economic activity data.View Full Paper PDF
