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Regulatory Impact Analyses Of Environmental Justice Effects, Spencer Banzhaf

ECON Publications

Recently, the US EPA has pledged to incorporate environmental justice considerations "into the fabric" of its rulemaking procedures. But finding an appropriate way to incorporate environmental justice considerations into policy-making has been a procedural challenge since President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898 over 15 years ago. In particular, environmental justice concerns tend to be overshadowed by efficiency considerations as embodied in benefit-cost analysis. Yet at the same time, both Presidents Obama and Clinton have issued orders to incorporate distributional and equity considerations into benefit-cost analysis, as well as the standard efficiency considerations.

This article argues that the environmental justice and …