Replication data for: Dirty Competition: Do Export Patterns Influence Environmental Policy?

Cao & Prakash (2009) argue that a country's environmental regulations are positively related to those of its structurally equivalent competitors because they engage in races in environmental regulations and their enforcement. We show that Cao & Prakash's results are not robust to some seemingly innocuous and theoretically-informed adjustments to their panel spatial models. The majority of Cao & Prakash's findings disappear as we: 1) use a larger imputed dataset; 2) use a more sensible log transf ormation; 3) include country-specific time trends; and 4) re-specify the connectivity matrix. We also run random coefficient model and show that the effect of pollution competition differs across countries, which points to the necessity of improving Cao & Prakash's theory of dirty competition as the political economists start to explain pollution policy and out- comes.