RESUMO
To help focus debate about the best use of society's resources, it is important to have estimates of the benefits and costs of further improvements in air quality. Such estimates are developed, with focus primarily on reductions in ground-level ozone resulting from the control of volatile organic compounds; to a lesser extent, particulate control also is considered. Proposed controls are evaluated for both the nation as a whole and for the Los Angeles metropolitan area, where violations of air quality standards are most frequent and severe. Subject to a number of uncertainties, the costs of proposed new controls are found to exceed the benefits, perhaps by a considerable margin.
Assuntos
Poluição do Ar/prevenção & controle , Saúde da População Urbana , População Urbana , Poluição do Ar/economia , Poluição do Ar/legislação & jurisprudência , Análise Custo-Benefício , Política de Saúde , Humanos , Ozônio , Estados UnidosRESUMO
Previous studies of the determinants of respiratory health have treated both smoking and air pollution as being exogenous. Using an instrumental variables approach, we estimate a simple production technology in which smoking is treated as being endogenously determined. Doing so, we find, increases the predicted absolute effects of smoking on respiratory health; relative to air pollution, smoking becomes a more important determinant when it is treated as an endogenous variable.