Title: Multiplicands data and the distribution of environmental expenditures in the upper Mississippi river basin

Authors: Kenneth Button, Kenneth Cox, Kingsley Haynes, Qingshu Xie

Addresses: Center for Transportation Policy, Operations and Logistics, School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA. ' Center for Transportation Policy, Operations and Logistics, School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA. ' Center for Transportation Policy, Operations and Logistics, School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA. ' MacroSys Research and Technology, 888 17th Street NW, Suite 312, Washington DC 20006, USA

Abstract: Economic multipliers are widely used in regional impact and policy analysis. A substantial literature has developed, defining multipliers and offering guidelines on estimation. This has also been tied to developments in regional growth theory, economic impact analysis, and input output analysis. The importance of regional multiplier analysis is likely to grow as infrastructure programmes are seen as important inputs into economic productivity growth initiatives and as fiscal transfers take on a more prominent role in economic integrations (e.g., the European Union, NAFTA, and the African Union). This paper is concerned with the problems of defining appropriate multiplicands, the initial injections that drive multipliers, at the regional level. Setting aside the literature on the export growth model, this aspect of impact analysis has been relatively neglected. The study presented here, of environmental expenditures in the Upper Mississippi River Basin, looks at some of the problems of using publicly available data to develop and derive a meaningful multiplicand.

Keywords: environmental expenditure; environmental costs; multiplicands; environmental management; economic multipliers; regional multiplier analysis; impact analysis; USA; United States; infrastructure investment; national income accounting.

DOI: 10.1504/IJETM.2006.011897

International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management, 2006 Vol.6 No.6, pp.553 - 563

Published online: 30 Dec 2006 *

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