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....

Will a carbon tax improve the welfare consequences of policies to promote electric vehicles? This paper examines when a complementarity could exist between carbon pricing and high electric vehicle adoption. We analyze electricity generation in recent years to show that in several regions, carbon...

This paper reviews theoretical and empirical literature on the household distribution of the costs and benefits of pollution control policies, and ways of integrating distributional issues into environmental cost/benefit analysis. Most studies find that policy costs fall disproportionately on...

We study how the implementation of emissions trading systems (ETS) impacts emissions reductions and the usage of renewable energy using a panel sample of the largest 100 countries worldwide. Exploiting the cross-country variations in ETS implementations, we show that ETS adoption materially...

The world has pledged to protect 30 percent of its land and waters by 2030 to halt the rapid deterioration of critical ecosystems. We summarize the state of knowledge about the impacts of protected area policies, with a focus on deforestation and vegetation cover. We discuss critical issues...

This paper presents both analytics and numerical simulation results relevant to proposals for carbon motivated regional trade agreements summarized in Dong & Whalley(2008). Unlike traditional regional trade agreements, by lowing tariffs on participant's low carbon emission goods and setting...

A robust body of evidence shows that air pollution exposure is detrimental to health outcomes, often measured as deaths and hospitalizations. This literature has focused less on subclinical channels that nonetheless impact behavior, performance, and skills. This article reviews the economic...

China is planning to implement the largest CO₂ emissions trading system in the world. To reduce emissions, the system will be a tradable performance standard (TPS), an emissions pricing mechanism that differs significantly from the emissions pricing instruments used in other countries, such as...

Reductions in ambient pollution have been taken as an indisputable "silver lining" to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Indeed, worldwide economic contraction induced by COVID-19 lockdowns should generate global air quality improvements ceteris paribus, including to China's notoriously-poor air quality. We...

This paper examines unintended effects of air quality regulation on decisions of major polluters, using plant data for 1963 to 1992. A key regulatory tool since 1978 is the annual designation of county air quality attainment status, where non-attainment status triggers specific equipment...