Weighing the Value of a Ton of Pollution
Year: 2010
Type: preprint
Abstract: The United States’ experimentation with emissions trading in the 1990s was an important first step in controlling air pollution while maximizing benefits from emissions that do occur. However, trading programs to date suffer a serious flaw: they treat all traded emissions of equal volume the same regardless of where they occur, instead of recognizing that emissions in a sparsely populated, pristine area likely have much lower social harm than the same volume of emissions in a heavily populated area with poor air quality. This paper summarizes the authors’ efforts to develop a more sophisticated emissions trading regime that addresses this shortcoming.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Authors: Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn
Institutions: Carnegie Mellon University, Yale University
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2266766707