Air Pollution: Causes, Sources and Abatement

Air Pollution: Causes, Sources and Abatement

The public health relevance of air pollution abatement.

Assuming a causal relationship between current levels of air pollution and morbidity/mortality, it is crucial to estimate the public health relevance of the problem. The derivation of air pollution attributable cases faces inherent uncertainties and requires influential assumptions. Based on the results of the trinational impact assessment study of Austria, France, and Switzerland, where pruden...

Emissions Trading, Electricity Restructuring, and Investment in Pollution Abatement

When the US federal government first began regulating major sources of air pollution in the 1960s, the conventional approach to meeting air quality standards involved establishing maximum emissions rates or technology based standards for regulated stationary sources. However, economists have long maintained that an emissions permit market could more efficiently coordinate pollution abatement ac...

On Marketable Air-Pollution Permits: The Case for a System of Pollution Offsets

After examining the properties of several alternative forms of marketable permit systems for the control of air pollution, this paper proposes a system of pollution offsets as the most promising approach. Under the pollution-offset scheme, sources of emissions are free to trade emissions permits subject to the constraint of no violations of the predetermined air-quality standard at any receptor...

ECONOMIC VALUATION OF AIR POLLUTION ABATEMENT: Benefits from Health Effects

INTRODUCTION .......................................... 319 METHODS TO ESTIMATE BENEFITS ........................... 320 ESTIMATING THE BENEFITS OF ABATEMENT USING THE DIRECT METHOD ........................................ 322 Local or National Estimates? ................................. 322 Estimating the Health Effects of Air Pollution ...................... 323 Estimation of the Marginal Be...