Party Regimes and Air Quality in Canada
Ross McKitrick, University of Guelph Department of Economics
Canadian Journal of Economics 39(2) May 2006, 604-620.
ABSTRACT:
Environmental concerns often figure prominently in opinion polls. But do election outcomes actually affect the environment? I test the influence of the party in power on urban air pollution in 13 Canadian cities. The government’s political stripe is not reliably associated with positive or negative effects on air pollution. Provincial parties on both the right and the left are associated with elevated levels of some air contaminants. Federal effects also go in contrasting directions. Overall it appears a change in government is unlikely to be a reliable predictor of changes in air pollution.
PREPRINT
The Politics of Pollution
This is a pre-print of an article accepted for publication at the Canadian Journal of Economics, copyright (c) The Canadian Economics Association
DATA and CODE:
- The main datafile (in Excel CSV format) is Here.
- The STATA command file is Here. (remove the .txt extension to run) Note that when you first run this you may have to put an * beside the first log close command since the file won't be open.
- The output log is Here.
Go up to Publications and Papers Page
Return to Ross McKitrick's home page