Using Marginal Damages in Environmental Policy: A Study of Air Pollution in the United States

摘要

Federal emissions control policies are largely based on the egalitarian proposition that all identifiable risks to health from specific air pollutants ought to be made negligible throughout the United States. Professors Muller and Mendelsohn, in an ambitious book that integrates their earlier work, outline a philosophically different alternative of intrinsic appeal to economists. They argue that available integrated assessment modeling can provide estimates of marginal environmental damages from individual sources or geographic areas as small as counties. Further, these estimates are sufficiently precise and reliable to be used to set damage-based emissions control policies. In particular, they recommend that policymakers shift away from current emissions control policies-a mix of technology-based standards and ton-for-ton trading programs-and instead tailor regulation based on net damages. Their most dramatic recommendation, to base emissions permit trading (or emission taxes) on estimates of marginal damages for individual sources, could lead to the talisman of efficient emissions regulation.