Finding an appropriate way to incorporate environmental justice considerations into policy-making has been a procedural challenge since President Clinton issued Executive Order 12,898 over 15 years ago. Moreover, environmental justice continues to be overshadowed by efficiency considerations as...

In this paper, we examine the large and expanding area of Environmental Justice (EJ). The research in this area has developed from examining relatively simple comparisons of current demographic characteristics near environmental nuisances to performing multiple regression analysis and...

The purpose of this paper is to outline a method for evaluating the Environmental Justice (EJ) implications of revising the dust lead hazard standards for floors. For simplicity this paper only addresses populations as defined by poverty status, but the methods described can be applied to...

This paper develops methods for evaluating distributional impacts of alternative environmental policies across demographic groups. The income inequality literature provides a natural methodological toolbox for comparing distributions of environmental outcomes. We show that the most commonly used...

Economists have long been interested in explaining the spatial distribution of economic activity, focusing on what factors motivate profit-maximizing firms when they choose to open a new plant or expand an existing facility. We begin our paper with a general discussion of the theory of plant...

Economists have long been interested in measuring distributional impacts of policy interventions. As environmental justice (EJ) emerged as an ethical issue in the 1970s, the academic literature has provided statistical analyses of the incidence and causes of various environmental outcomes as...

Policy-makers and others interested in environmental justice (EJ) are concerned that poor and minority communities are disproportionately exposed to pollution. Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments required the dirtiest coal-fired utilities to cap their SO2 emissions at 5.8 million tons...

We examine the determinants of environmental regulatory activity (inspections and enforcement actions) for 1616 U.S. manufacturing plants in four large U.S. cities – Los Angeles, Boston, Columbus, and Houston – using data for 2000-2002. The main focus of our study is to examine whether or...

Many environmental justice studies argue that firms choose to locate waste sites or polluting plants disproportionately in minority or poor communities. However, it is not uncommon for these studies to match site or plant location to contemporaneous socioeconomic characteristics instead of to...

There is substantial evidence that hazardous and solid waste facilities are located disproportionately in communities of color. While there are many potential explanations, one contributing factor might be that policy makers treat waste facilities differently, depending on the racial makeup of...