Do Environmental Regulations Disproportionately Affect Small Businesses? Evidence from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures Survey
September 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-25R
Abstract
It remains an open question whether the impact of environmental regulations differs by the size of the business. Such differences might be expected because of statutory, enforcement, and/or compliance asymmetries. Here, we consider the net effect of these three asymmetries, by estimating the relationship between plant size and pollution abatement expenditures, using establishment-level data on U.S. manufacturers from the Census Bureau's Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures (PACE) surveys of 1974-1982, 1984-1986, 1988-1994, 1999, and 2005, combined with data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures and Census of Manufactures. We model establishments' PAOC intensity - that is, their pollution abatement operating costs per unit of economic activity - as a function of establishment size, industry, and year. Our results show that PAOC intensity increases with establishment size. We also find that larger firms spend more per unit of output than do smaller firms.
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:
production,
manufacturing,
cost,
manufacturer,
accounting,
firms size,
expenditure,
regulation,
regulatory,
consumption,
emission,
pollution,
environmental regulation,
epa,
environmental,
pollutant,
abatement expenditures,
polluting,
costs pollution,
pollution abatement,
expense,
environmental expenditures,
estimates pollution
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identified to contain references to specific institutions, datasets, and other organizations.
:
Census of Manufactures,
Annual Survey of Manufactures,
Standard Statistical Establishment List,
Standard Industrial Classification,
Small Business Administration,
Center for Economic Studies,
Ordinary Least Squares,
Environmental Protection Agency,
PAOC,
Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures,
North American Industry Classification System
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