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Measuring The Impact Of The Toxics Release Inventory: Evidence From Manufacturing Plant Births

March 2013

Written by: Nicholas E. Powers

Working Paper Number:

CES-13-07

Abstract

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.

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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.

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:
production, manufacturing, disclosure, growth, regulation, regulatory, agriculture, impact, spillover, emission, pollution, environmental regulation, epa, environmental, pollutant, gdp, polluting, polluting industries

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:
Census of Manufactures, Standard Statistical Establishment List, Standard Industrial Classification, Center for Economic Studies, National Bureau of Economic Research, Federal Trade Commission, Toxics Release Inventory, Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies, Longitudinal Business Database, Environmental Protection Agency, Penn State University, Census of Manufacturing Firms, North American Industry Classification System, University of Michigan

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