On the Measurement of Environmental Inequality: Ranking Emissions Distributions Generated by Different Policy Instruments

Erin Mansur and Glenn Sheriff

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2021, vol. 8, issue 4, 721 - 758

Abstract: Adapting methods from the income distribution literature, we use a normatively significant metric to rank emissions distributions from alternative policies in a manner consistent with an explicit well-behaved preference structure. The approach allows one to determine which policy has the most desirable outcome for a given demographic group as well as which groups benefit most from a given policy. Applying these methods to Southern California’s NOx pollution-trading program and a counterfactual command-and-control policy suggests that in this case trading benefited all demographic groups and generated a more equitable overall distribution of emissions, even after considering the lower aggregate emissions. We find that Blacks experienced the largest gains from RECLAIM relative to the counterfactual, while Hispanics benefited least.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/713113 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/713113 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/713113

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().