TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cragg,Michael I.
AU  - Kahn,Matthew E.
TI  - Carbon Geography: The Political Economy of Congressional Support for Legislation Intended to Mitigate Greenhouse Gas Production
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14963
PY  - 2009
Y2  - May 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14963
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14963.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael Cragg
The Brattle Group
44 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138 
E-Mail: michael.cragg@brattle.com

Matthew E. Kahn
UCLA Institute of the Environment
Department of Economics
Department of Public Policy
Box 951496
La Kretz Hall, Suite 300
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1496
Tel: 310/794-4904
Fax: 310/825-9663
E-Mail: mkahn@ioe.ucla.edu
AB  - Stringent regulation for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions will impose different costs across geographical regions.  Low-carbon, environmentalist states, such as California, would bear less of the incidence of such regulation than high-carbon  Midwestern states.   Such anticipated costs are likely to influence Congressional voting patterns.  This paper uses several geographical data sets to document that conservative, poor areas have higher per-capita carbon emissions than liberal, richer areas.   Representatives from such areas are shown to have much lower probabilities of voting in favor of anti-carbon legislation.  In the 111th Congress, the Energy and Commerce Committee consists of members who represent high carbon districts.  These geographical facts suggest that the Obama Administration and the Waxman Committee will face distributional challenges in building a majority voting coalition in favor of internalizing the carbon externality.
ER  -