TY  - JOUR
AU  - Sigman,Hilary
TI  - Letting States do the Dirty Work: State Responsibility for Federal Environmental Regulation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9451
PY  - 2003
Y2  - January 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9451
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9451.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
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
AB  - Under most U.S. environmental regulations, the federal government shares responsibility with the states by authorizing them to implement and enforce federal policies. Authorization provides states with considerable discretion over the effects of regulation and is perhaps the most significant decentralization in U.S. environmental policy. However, few studies address its role. To fill this gap, this paper explores the empirical determinants of authorization for water pollution and hazardous waste regulation. Although no single hypothesis strongly explains authorization, I find some evidence that states authorize to increase the stringency of regulation, which suggests that environmental decentralization would be beneficial.
ER  -