Working Paper: NBER ID: w29478
Authors: joseph s shapiro
Abstract: This article proposes and evaluates four hypotheses about US pollution and environmental policy over the last half century. First, air and water pollution have declined substantially, although greenhouse gas emissions have not. Second, environmental policy explains a large share of these trends. Third, much of the regulation of air and drinking water pollution has benefits that exceed costs, although the evidence for surface water pollution regulation is less clear. Fourth, while the distribution of pollution across social groups is unequal, market-based environmental policies and command-and-control policies do not appear to produce systematically different distributions of environmental outcomes. I also discuss recent innovations in methods and data that can be used to evaluate pollution trends and policies, including the increased use of environmental administrative data, statistical cost-benefit comparisons, analysis of previously understudied policies, more sophisticated analyses of pollution transport, micro-macro frameworks, and a focus on the distribution of environmental outcomes.
Keywords: pollution; environmental policy; air quality; water quality
JEL Codes: H23; Q50; Q52; R11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Environmental policy (Q58) | long-term decreases in pollution levels (Q52) |
| Air pollution (Q53) | decline in air pollution levels (Q53) |
| Drinking water pollution (Q25) | decline in drinking water pollution levels (Q25) |
| Surface water pollution (Q25) | decline in surface water pollution levels (Q53) |
| Air and drinking water policies (Q25) | benefits that exceed their costs (H43) |
| Surface water policies (Q25) | unclear benefits (J32) |
| Unequal distribution of pollution (Q53) | market-based and command-and-control policies (Q58) |