The Korea Local Administration Review

The purpose of this study is to empirically test effects of pollutant releaseinventories on environmental expenditures in local governments of Korea. Threetypes of pollutant release inventories are included in the statistical model: toxicrelease inventory, water pollutant release inventory and noise release inventory.The main dependent variable in this study is the ratio of environmentalexpenditure of local governments as to the total expenditure. This study usesspatial regression models to enumerate effects of pollutant release inventorieson environmental expenditures because spatial dependency is found amongunits. This study finds that water pollutant release inventory has strong impacton environmental expenditure while other types of pollutant release inventoryhas no impact.