Economic and policy implications of urban air pollution in the United States, 1970 to 2000

(cont.) over time as pollution levels change. Using these new models, we valued the economic benefit of reduced air pollution due to the Clean Air Act regulations to be over $7 trillion from 1970 to 2000, or 2.1% of aggregate US economic welfare over the period. This does not include the benefits into the future (after 2000) from reduction in mortality due chronic exposure during these years. The economic benefit of those saved mortalities is another $7 trillion using a 3% discount rate. Another calculation is the remaining economic burden of unmitigated pollution levels (actual historical pollution). We estimate this to be approximately $9 trillion over the same period. The $9 trillion burden includes the early mortalities due to chronic exposure to PM before and during this period. While these economic benefits of air pollution regulation are large ($7 trillion), they are considerably less than the $27.6 trillion estimated in EPAs own analysis of the benefits of air pollution regulation. The main difference for our lower estimate is the stock-flow accounting of mortality due to chronic exposure. There are considerable uncertainties in these estimates both because of uncertainties in the relationship between air pollution exposure and the health effects, and in the assumptions needed to value these effects.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Technology and Policy Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Yang, Trent, 1979-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John Reilly.

• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28315

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/28315