Public Goods Provision: Lessons from the Tellico Dam Controversy
Posted: 12 Oct 2004
Abstract
Although absent from the initial Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973, evidence of economic considerations first appeared in the 1978 amendments. The only controversial vote concerning the ESA was the one to exempt the Tellico Dam (1978). Although the dam was a local project with little expected net benefit, this article argues that broader economic considerations mattered. Working from public choice models for congressional voting decisions, a limited dependent variable regression analysis indicates the economic variables with the most explanatory power for this environmental decision are college education, poverty, the designation of critical habitat within a district, the number of endangered species in the state, dollars the state received due to earlier ESA funding, and the percentage of the district that is federal land. Comparisons with aggregated environmental votes in the same year highlight the intensity of economic considerations in the Tellico case. Our results imply that the ESA's prohibitions have worked successfully to give weight to nonquantifiable and dispersed benefits in the face of concentrated and visible costs.
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