Paying for Permanence: An Economic Analysis of EPA's Cleanup Decisions at Superfund Sites
分析EPA在100多个超级基金场地的清理决策，考察其在清理成本与永久性之间的权衡，发现EPA偏好永久方案但受成本约束，且社会经济特征对权衡影响不大。
We analyze EPA's cleanup decisions at over 100 Superfund sites and examine whether and how EPA trades off the cost against the permanence of cleanup. EPA's decisions reveal both a preference for permanent solutions and an aversion to cost. For example, EPA prefers incinerating soils to isolating and containing them in place, but not at any price. At larger sites EPA appears willing to accept additional costs of as much as $40 million to incinerate. With regard to environmental equity, we find little evidence that EPA's cost-permanence tradeoff is affected by socioeconomic characteristics in the communities surrounding the sites.