Abstract
Bureaucracies may set priorities for their workload in response to social goals or pressures from 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 stages from listing to cleanup, using an econometric method for multiple sequential durations. The empirical results provide little evidence that the Environmental Protection Agency (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 percent. This result suggests a benefit from funding provision of environmental quality and other public goods through diffuse sources, such as broadbased taxes, to avoid the detrimental effects of such concentrated interests.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Spatial Aspects of Environmental Policy |
| Publisher | Taylor and Francis |
| Pages | 303-332 |
| Number of pages | 30 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781351148689 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780815397175 |
| State | Published - Jan 22 2019 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Earth and Planetary Sciences
- General Social Sciences