IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v17y2025i1p1-36.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Clean Identification? The Effects of the Clean Air Act on Air Pollution, Exposure Disparities, and House Prices

Author

Listed:
  • Lutz Sager
  • Gregor Singer

Abstract

We assess the US Clean Air Act standards for fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Using high-resolution data, we find that the 2005 regulation reduced PM2.5 levels by 0.4 μg/ m3 over five years, with larger effects in more polluted areas. Standard difference-in-differences overstates these effects by a factor of three because time trends differ by baseline pollution, a bias we overcome with three alternative approaches. We show that the regulation contributed to narrowing Urban-Rural and Black-White PM2.5 exposure disparities, but less than difference-in-differences suggest. Pollution damages capitalized into house prices, however, appear larger than previously thought when leveraging regulatory variation.

Suggested Citation

  • Lutz Sager & Gregor Singer, 2025. "Clean Identification? The Effects of the Clean Air Act on Air Pollution, Exposure Disparities, and House Prices," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 1-36, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:17:y:2025:i:1:p:1-36
    DOI: 10.1257/pol.20220745
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20220745
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E192280V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20220745.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20220745.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pol.20220745?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • K32 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Energy, Environmental, Health, and Safety Law
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:17:y:2025:i:1:p:1-36. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.