Policy Evolution under the Clean Air Act
Richard Schmalensee and
Robert Stavins
No 18-27, RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future
Abstract:
The US Clean Air Act, passed in 1970 with strong bipartisan support, was the first environmental law to give the Federal government a serious regulatory role, established the architecture of the US air pollution control system, and became a model for subsequent environmental laws in the United States and globally. We outline the Act’s key provisions, as well as the main changes Congress has made to it over time. We assess the evolution of air pollution control policy under the Clean Air Act, with particular attention to the types of policy instruments used. We provide a generic assessment of the major types of policy instruments, and we trace and assess the historical evolution of EPA’s policy instrument use, with particular focus on the increased use of market-based policy instruments, beginning in the 1970s and culminating in the 1990s. Over the past fifty years, air pollution regulation has gradually become much more complex, and over the past twenty years, policy debates have become increasingly partisan and polarized, to the point that it has become impossible to amend the Act or pass other legislation to address the new threat of climate change.
Date: 2018-11-21
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rff.org/documents/1827/RFF20WP-18-2720dc.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Policy Evolution under the Clean Air Act (2019)
Working Paper: Policy Evolution under the Clean Air Act (2018)
Working Paper: Policy Evolution under the Clean Air Act (2018)
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:rff:dpaper:dp-18-27
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Resources for the Future ().