Working Paper: NBER ID: w7704
Authors: Hilary Sigman
Abstract: Bureaucracies may set priorities for their workload according to social goals or the desires of concentrated private interests. This paper explores bureaucratic priorities empirically by studying Superfund, the federal program for cleaning up contaminated sites. It examines the amount of time that sites on Superfund's National Priorities List require to complete three states from listing to cleanup, using an econometric method for multiple sequential durations. The empirical results provide little evidence that the EPA prioritizes sites according to their harms. By contrast, concentrated private interests, such as liable parties and local communities, play an important role in the EPA's priorities. Delays caused by liable parties may reduce net benefits of cleanup by 8%. This result suggests a benefit from funding provision of environmental quality and other public goods through diffuse sources, such as broad-based taxes, to avoid the detrimental effects of such concentrated interests.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: Q2; K32
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Delays caused by liable parties (K13) | Net benefits of cleanup (Q52) |
| Concentrated private interests (P19) | EPA prioritization of Superfund sites (H12) |
| Local communities (R23) | EPA prioritization of Superfund sites (H12) |