This paper revisits King and Shaver’s (2001) “Are Aliens Green? Assessing Foreign Establishments’ Environmental Conduct in the United States”. Given the development of globalization since the original time frame of the study (1992-1996), we replicate their paper and examine foreign-owned establishments’ environmental practices, using recent data (2010-2018) from the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). We extend the analysis to not only estimate the effect of foreign ownership on toxic waste releases but also examine other types of pollutants, explicitly estimating the differences between domestic- and foreign-owned facilities concerning greenhouse gas emissions and particulate matters. Our results largely align with the original study, suggesting that foreign-owned establishments still generate more toxic waste but also engage in more waste management than U.S.-owned counterparts. However, in contrast to the original research, we find that foreign-owned establishments subsequently release more emissions despite their waste management efforts. We find releases of foreign-owned facilities to be higher when it comes to both toxic waste emissions and particulate matters, but do not report differences in greenhouse gas emissions. Our study underlines the crucial role of ownership when it comes to corporate environmental practices.
