Does More Federal Environmental Funding Increase or Decrease States' Efforts?

We examine the flow of federal grants-in-aid from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the states. We simultaneously model two dependent variables (the flow of EPA funds, and state environmental and natural resource budgets) to identify the independent roles of state political institutions, political preferences, economic and demographic characteristics, and the task environment. Our central focus, though, is on the relationship between grants and state spending after taking into account those direct effects. We examine the evidence for positive association (a flypaper effect) and negative association (crowding out). We show the different roles for political institutions, political preferences, demographic and economic characteristics, and the task environment in each spending context. Most importantly, we find evidence for a flypaper effect between federal funds and state spending: Federal spending and state spending are positively correlated after accounting for the contribution of the unique factors. (Contains 2 tables and 1 footnote.)