Social Cost of Environmental Quality Regulations: A General Equilibrium Analysis

Michael Hazilla and Raymond Kopp

Journal of Political Economy, 1990, vol. 98, issue 4, 853-73

Abstract: The use of cost-benefit analysis by federal regulatory agencies has expanded greatly in scope and sophistication. Unfortunately, agencies continue to employ private cost, rather than social cost, to evaluate environmental quality regulations. Furthermore, general equilibrium impacts and intertemporal effects of regulations are typically not included in the evaluation. In this paper, the authors estimate the social cost of environmental quality regulations mandated by the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. They construct an econometric general equilibrium model of the United States to demonstrate that social costs estimates diverge sharply from private costs estimates. The authors also demonstrate that general equilibrium impacts are significant and pervasive. Copyright 1990 by University of Chicago Press.

Date: 1990
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (135)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/261709 full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. See http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE for details.

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:jpolec:v:98:y:1990:i:4:p:853-73

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().