This article analyzes the equity implications of the EPA's Superfiund program by examining the geographic distribution of sites, who pays for cleanup, and cleanup pace. Although the 'polluter pays" principle is used to justify Superfiund policy, it is a goal that is not-and indeed usually cannot-be attained for past contamination. Further, the geographic distribution ofsuperfund sites suggests that the likely beneficiaries of program expenditures live in counties that are on average both wealthier and more highly educated than the rest, and also have lower rates of poverty. The pace of the EPA's cleanups, however, depends mostly on the sites' potential hazard, and is not apparently motivated by the localities' socioeconomic characteristics orpolitical representation. The program is found in several respects to be both ineficient and inequitable, yet Superfiund enjoys considerable support for reasons beyond these traditional public policy goals, including its political and symbolic appeal.Policy analysis is more often devoted to analyzing the efficiency (or inefficiency) of public programs than their equity, perhaps because of the more obvious value judgments implied in evaluating equity, because sufficient data are unavailable, or because no academic discipline (analogous to economics) explicitly trains analysts to evaluate equity.' Equity is generally addressed either in terms of procedure or outcome, although there is little agreement about which should dominate, or how one should be traded off for another in forming public policies [Okun, 1975; Stone, 1988, ch. 21. This article analyzes the broad equity implications of the nation's hazardous waste cleanup I I a m not implying that equity is secondary to efficiency in the fornation of public policy. To the contrary, arguments based on various forms of equity probably are far more influential than efficiency in policy formation and change. However, I believe that the tools of policy analysis are more often applied to efficiency than equity.
Major US federal regulatory decisions are developed and justified using regulatory impact analyses (RIAs) mandated by executive order. We examine the scientific citation activity in RIAs, a unique effort that we believe holds significant potential for understanding the use of science in policymaking. This paper reports preliminary findings from collecting and examining scientific citations in 104 RIAs from 2008–2012. We present evidence indicating that some agencies make extensive use of science in RIAs, that there is substantial variation in use across agencies, and show variation across journals and disciplines cited by regulatory agencies. Finally, we present analysis showing that regulatory policymakers make greater use of research published in highly cited scholarly journals. We conclude by outlining several future directions for research using these data.
Using data on all final National Priorities List (NPL) sites, this study employs an integrated model of distributive and public interest politics to determine whether the overall pace of cleanup efforts and funding of the 8.5 billion Superfund program over the past eight years reflects self‐interested congressional influence or public interest objectives. Despite the fact that both EPA and Congress have substantial incentives to promote the Superfund program, the results indicate that once a site is on the final NPL, there is little committee‐based congressional influence over the distribution of site cleanup or funding, although evidence exists that legislators can hasten a site's transition from proposed to final status on the NPL. The chief determinants of cleanup pace and level of funding are the site's Hazard Ranking System (HRS) scores, whether federal funds are financing the cleanup, and whether the site is designated as a state priority.
In previous studies of distributive politics scholars have investigated legislative influence without accounting for the policies' independent merits. As a result, they have failed to include a plausible explanation of the counterfactual (i.e., which projects would have been funded in the absence of congressional committee influence), which has led to invalid inferences regarding legislative influence. The model of distributive politics is reformulated to account for an assumed efficient and/or equitable project allocation in the absence of legislative influence. Using data from proposed Army Corps of Engineers' projects and the funding recommendations of three institutions, the findings indicate that pork barrel politics indeed exists and imposes significant efficiency costs but that both equity and economic efficiency play prominent roles in the decision-making process as well. Cost-benefit analysis is seen to play a constructive role by improving the efficiency of project choice; and the corps's cost-benefit analysis guidelines are beneficial from the agency's organizational perspective, as well.
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