Who pays for clean air: The cost and benefit distribution of Federal automobile emission controls - Hardcover

Harrison, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0884104516 ISBN 13: 9780884104513

Publisher: Ballinger Pub. Co, 1975

Synopsis

From Ward Elliott's Review: Travelers to New England may remember those funny little maps in the curio shops, showing the United States as seen from Boston. The perceived Greater Boston sprawls like the Great Plains; Cape Cod is larger than Florida; the more distant states form a small and amorphous jumble. No doubt a comparable map as seen from Los Angeles would show that city extending to Tulsa and the plaster Matterhorn at Disneyland towering like Everest above the smog. David Harrison is a man of scholarly parts. He has three degrees in economics from Harvard, teaches there, and has contributed to the National Academy of Science's landmark study, The Costs and Benefits of Automobile Emission Control (1974). In Who Paysfor Clean Air he asks the right questions; who pays for, and benefits from, auto pollution controls? He answers them with impressive thoroughness. He is resourceful in developing data, careful in analyzing and interpreting it. In many ways, Who Pays in a triumph of disaggregation, by geographic region and urban or suburban situs, as well as by class. But, from a California perspective, it still recalls those little maps which run the Massachusetts Turnpike to Ohio. If clean air is worth a fight (and NAS's figures suggest that it is), something resembling the present two-car strategy seems more appropriate than a wider, looser one lest Gresham's Law apply to cars and dirty ones drive out clean. The ultimate balance may or may not be struck to meet Los Angeles's needs, but Volvo's catalyst is only one of many indicators that an early decision to subordinate health-cost considerations to control-cost considerations may foreclose prematurely the development of cheaper, better technology which would cut both. Till the day comes when all costs and benefits are placed in the great balance, Harrison's book provides many useful perspectives, well organized and presented, on a major policy question.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballinger Pub. Co
• Publication date: 1975
• ISBN 10: 0884104516
• ISBN 13: 9780884104513
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 167