King and Shaver (2001)

King, Andrew, and J. Myles Shaver. "Are Aliens Green? Assessing Establishments' Environmental Conduct in the United States." Strategic Management Journal, November 2001.

Uses data from the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory to compare the environmental performance of 4,078 foreign-owned and U.S.-owned establishments in the U.S. for the 1991-1996 time period. The researchers weight TRI emissions by toxicity, a very appropriate adjustment, but one rarely used with this data. Finds that foreign-owned establishments tend to generate more waste than their U.S.-owned counterparts. The authors argue that "firms operating in unfamiliar business conditions have difficulty responding to environmental demands." Also finds that firms with stringent home country regulation do not necessarily have cleaner operations in the U.S. "One would expect that having experienced high factor prices or regulation in the home country, the company would have developed lower-cost means for reducing waste or recovering the waste that they produce. Our analysis suggests no such effect."

Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/smj.201