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Environmental Policy Since Earth Day I: What Do We Know About the Benefits and Costs?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2016

A. Myrick Freeman III
A. Myrick Freeman III*
Affiliation:
Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine
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Abstract

Data on costs and benefits of the major environmental laws passed during the 1970s are reviewed. The winners in terms of benefit-cost analysis include: getting lead out of gasoline, controlling particulate air pollution, reducing the concentration of lead in drinking water, and the cleanup of hazardous waste sites with the lowest cost per cancer case avoided under Superfund. The losers include: mobile source air pollution control, water pollution control, and many of the regulations and cleanup decisions taken under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and Superfund.

Keywords

benefit-cost analysisbenefitscostsenvironmental policy
Type
Invited Presentations
Information
Agricultural and Resource Economics Review , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , April 2002 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association 

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