Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
College/Unit
Chambers College of Business and Economics
Department/Program/Center
Economics
Abstract
What factors determine federal spending on environmental goods? Is severity of the hazard the only metric of consideration, or do other factors play a vital role in explaining spending? This paper seeks to answer this question and to identify disbursement patterns within the context of the Abandoned Mine Land Fund (AMLF) program, a fund created as an aspect of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. We explore whether political factors, as well as environmental and health factors, have an explanatory role in disbursement of AMLF monies. The political factors examined include environmental interest group influence and legislator preferences and/or pressures to fund sites in their home states or districts. The results found here suggest that there exists a mix of public and private interests present in AMLF disbursement decisions during the overall span of the program, and that political influences have gained strength in the decision-making calculus in response to changes in the funding structure of the AMLF.
Digital Commons Citation
Troyan, Jessi and Hall, Joshua, "The Political Economy of Abandoned Mine Land Fund Disbursements" (2019). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 2361.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/2361
Source Citation
Troyan, J., & Hall, J. (2019). The Political Economy of Abandoned Mine Land Fund Disbursements. Economies, 7(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/economies7010003
Comments
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited