Date of Award
Fall 2025
Degree Type
Campus Access Only Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science
Department
Economics
First Advisor
Dorothea Herreiner, Ph.D
Abstract
This study develops a novel quantitative framework to test whether U.S. environmental policy follows a "snowball" trajectory by analyzing 158 policies across five administrations (Clinton through Biden), constructing a relationship matrix capturing inter-policy connections, and quantifying each policy's scope across multiple weighted dimensions. Three analyses support the snowball hypothesis. First, building relationships constitute 84.7% of all coded relationships, a proportion that is statistically significant and persists across both Democratic and Republican administrations. Second, inheritance ratios increase significantly over time (OLS: β = 0.348, p = 0.040), confirming that later policies inherit greater cumulative effect from the network than earlier ones. Third, the concentration of network dependence in specific hub policies is significantly non-random (Gini = 0.80, p < 0.001), with the top 10 policies accounting for 47.9% of all incoming weight. Together, these findings demonstrate that environmental policy accumulates through compounding relationships, with the network tripling cumulative impact beyond what isolated policies would achieve (amplification factor = 3.0). These results offer scholars and policymakers a framework for understanding how current decisions shape future regulatory capacity.
Recommended Citation
Parker, Kanna, "Modeling the Network Dynamics of U.S. Environmental Policy" (2025). Economics Honor Program. 1.
https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/econ_student/1
