Semester of Graduation

Summer 2026

Degree

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Severe chemical accidents may generate localized economic disruption beyond their direct environmental and health outcomes. This thesis studies whether these accidents affect nearby sales of minority-owned businesses, a subset that may be notably vulnerable to short-run demand shocks and operational dis- ruptions. We combine the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Risk Man- agement Program’s accident records with National Establishment Time Series firm-level sales data, and estimate a stacked event-study and a pooled difference- in-differences design. The design compares firms within a 15 kilometer radius of a severe accident facility to their neighbors in the surrounding 15-30 kilometers, focused on the first severe accident between 1994 and 2018 at a given facility in- volving at least 1,000 evacuations. Baseline results indicate that severe chemical accidents are associated with short-run sales decline for minority-owned busi- nesses. Effects are largest in the accident year with an estimated sales decline of approximately 3.1 percent. Pooled difference-in-differences on short-run es- timates reinforce this occurrence. Supporting exercises display no statistically detectable joint pre-trends in the baseline event-study. Overall, the findings are consistent with severe industrial chemical accidents creating short-run lo- cal business costs for nearby minority-owned businesses, while the longer-run persistence of these effects remains imprecisely estimated.

Date

7-28-2026

Committee Chair

Li Qingxiao

LSU Acknowledgement

1

LSU Accessibility Acknowledgment

1

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Available for download on Monday, May 28, 2029

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