By Samuel Stolper
When does pollution policy work? Is there a fail-safe formula that applies regardless of political, environmental, and public health context? In the economics research literature, there is now a substantial body of work documenting the efficacy of policies targeting pollution in the United States. But think about the relevant differences between the U.S. and a country like India: In the latter, health care quality is thought to be lower, ambient levels of pollution are known to be higher, and government institutions may or may not have the same level of effectiveness. Thus, studies of the U.S. context are likely not externally valid; a given level of pollution may be extremely detrimental to health in one country but not in another, and a given policy instrument may work wonders in one country but be totally unenforceable in another.
That is precisely what motivates a paper like Michael Greenstone and Rema Hanna’s “Environmental Regulations, Air and Water Pollution, and Infant Mortality in India.” The implicit argument is, we should care about environmental policy in India because (a) pollution is alarmingly high there, and (b) the country’s population and growth rate suggest that its regulation of the environment is going to be extremely important to the achievement of climate change goals. But we cannot simply take policy lessons from the developed world and apply them like a band-aid to India…
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