Ticket to Paradise? The Effect of a Public Transport Subsidy on Air Quality

Niklas Gohl () and Philipp Schrauth ()
Additional contact information
Niklas Gohl: University of Potsdam, DIW Berlin, Berlin School of Economics
Philipp Schrauth: University of Potsdam

No 50, CEPA Discussion Papers from Center for Economic Policy Analysis

Abstract: This paper provides novel evidence on the impact of public transport subsidies on air pollution. We obtain causal estimates by leveraging a unique policy intervention in Germany that temporarily reduced nationwide prices for regional public transport to a monthly flat rate price of 9 Euros. Us-ing DiD estimation strategies on air pollutant data, we show that this intervention causally reduced a benchmark air pollution index by more than six percent. Our results illustrate that public transport subsidies – especially in the context of spatially constrained cities – offer a viable alterna-tive for policymakers and city planers to improve air quality, which has been shown to crucially affect health outcomes.

Keywords: air pollution; public transport; transport subsidies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q53 Q58 R12 R48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-eur, nep-hea, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-55846 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pot:cepadp:50

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPA Discussion Papers from Center for Economic Policy Analysis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marco Winkler ().