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Virginia Tech

Air quality economics: Three essays

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

This dissertation consists of three separate research projects. Each paper uses a different applied econometric technique to investigate problems related to air quality economics. The first chapter is a general introduction to all three studies. The second chapter explores adopting an environmentally-friendly public transportation system in Europe. The Bayesian econometric methods show that willingness to pay for a new public transportation system is primarily driven by improvements to public goods, such as air quality and greenhouse gas emission reduction. The third chapter uses the red tide-related stated experience and satellite imagery of chlorophyll-a concentration as well as field data of respiratory irritation. This chapter illustrates that ancillary scientific information can be efficiently combined with choice experimental data. The fourth chapter uses panel fixed-effect models to investigate the short-term effect of air pollution on students' cognitive performance in China. It is shown that PM2.5 has a significantly negative impact on students' exam performance.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Philosophy
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Economics, Agriculture and Life Sciences
Department dc:contributor.department
Economics
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2022

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Yao, Zhenyu
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Moeltner, Klaus
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Leman, Scotland C.
  • Zhang, Wei
  • Cobourn, Kelly M.

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:34587
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115600

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Yao, Zhenyu. Air quality economics: Three essays. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/115600