空气污染管制是否过于宽松？——来自美国抵消市场的证据
Is Air Pollution Regulation Too Lenient? Evidence from US Offset Markets
American Economic Review · 2025 · [{"name": "Joseph Shapiro", "affiliation": ["University of California, Berkeley"]}, {"name": "Reed Walker", "affiliation": ["University of California, Berkeley"]}]
中文摘要
我们构建了一个用于估计空气污染管制边际成本的框架，并将其用于评估政策效率。我们利用《清洁空气法》中的一项条款，该条款要求新建工厂向现有设施支付费用以减少排放。这项“抵消”政策催生了数百个地方污染市场，这些市场因污染物种类和地理位置而异。理论分析与交易数据表明，抵消价格能够揭示边际减排成本。我们将这些价格与利用主流空气质量模型估计得到的污染减排边际收益进行比较，发现平均而言，边际收益超过边际成本十倍以上。(JEL D61, H23, K32, Q52, Q53, Q58)
Abstract
We develop a framework to estimate the marginal cost of air pollution regulation and apply it to assess policy efficiency. We exploit a provision of the Clean Air Act that requires new plants to pay incumbent facilities to reduce emissions. This “offset” policy creates hundreds of local pollution markets, differing by pollutant and location. Theory and transaction data suggest that offset prices reveal marginal abatement costs. We compare these prices to marginal benefits of pollution reduction estimated using leading air quality models and find that, on average, marginal benefits exceed marginal costs by more than a factor of ten. (JEL D61, H23, K32, Q52, Q53, Q58)