TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chang,Howard F.
AU  - Sigman,Hilary
TI  - An Empirical Analysis of Cost Recovery in Superfund Cases:  Implications for Brownfields and Joint and Several Liability
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 16209
PY  - 2010
Y2  - July 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16209
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16209.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Howard F. Chang
University of Pennsylvania Law School
3400 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6204
Tel: 609-688-0245
Fax: 609-688-8602
E-Mail: hchang@law.upenn.edu

Hilary Sigman
Department of Economics
Rutgers University
75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ  08901-1248
Fax: 732/932-7416
E-Mail: sigman@econ.rutgers.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2010-12-01
AB  - Economic theory developed in the prior literature indicates that under the joint and several liability imposed by the federal Superfund statute, the government should recover more of its costs of cleaning up contaminated sites than it would under nonjoint liability, and the amount recovered should increase with the number of defendants and with the independence among defendants in trial outcomes.  We test these predictions empirically using data on outcomes in federal Superfund cases.  Theory also suggests that this increase in the amount recovered may discourage the sale and redevelopment of potentially contaminated sites (or “brownfields”).  We find the increase to be substantial, which suggests that this implicit tax on sales may be an important deterrent for parties contemplating brownfields redevelopment.
ER  -