Measuring State Environmental Policy
Review of Policy Research 29(4): 544-569, 2012
51 Pages Posted: 24 Dec 2015
Date Written: December 16, 2011
Abstract
Studies of environmental policy employ various empirical strategies for measuring state environmental effort. The majority of these strategies can be divided into four categories: indices of state programmatic indicators, government expenditures, pollution abatement costs, and regulatory enforcement actions. In this paper we argue that these measures are empirically distinct, capture different attributes of state environmental policy, and are correlated with different intrastate factors. Thus, the choice among environmental policy measures is substantively important for researchers to consider, and we conclude by providing advice to scholars about choosing among these measures.
Keywords: environment, U.S. States, pollution, methods, policy, measurement
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