Valuing Air Quality Using the Life Satisfaction Approach

Simon Luechinger

Economic Journal, 2009, vol. 119, issue 536, 482-515

Abstract: I use the life satisfaction approach to value air quality, combining individual‐level panel and high‐resolution SO2 data. To avoid simultaneity problems, I construct a novel instrument exploiting the natural experiment created by the mandated scrubber installation at power plants, with wind directions dividing counties into treatment and control groups. I find a negative effect of pollution on well‐being that is larger for instrumental variable than conventional estimates, robust to controls for local unemployment, particulate pollution, reunification effects and rural/urban trends, and larger for environmentalists and predicted risk groups. To calculate total willingness‐to‐pay, the estimates are supplemented by hedonic housing regressions.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (279)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2008.02241.x

Related works:
Journal Article: Valuing Air Quality Using the Life Satisfaction Approach (2009)
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:wly:econjl:v:119:y:2009:i:536:p:482-515

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://onlinelibrary ... 1111/(ISSN)1468-0297

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Journal is currently edited by Estelle Cantillon, Martin Cripps, Andrea Galeotti, Morten Ravn, Kjell G. Salvanes, Frederic Vermeulen, Hans-Joachim Voth and Rachel Kranton

More articles in Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().