Essays on the Health, Wage and Employment Effects of the U.S. Clean Air Act

Abstract

This dissertation considers the health and labour market implications of the U.S. Clean Air Act. Chapter 1 exploits the exogeneous variation provided by the 1990 Amendment of the U.S. Clean Air Act in order to test the hypothesis that environmental regulation aimed at air pollution had a direct impact on adult mortality. Using data from 1987 to 2016, I find that the 1990 Amendment reduced the age-adjusted respiratory mortality rates by 14.2 % for counties that were in nonattainment for ozone, and 9.4 % for counties that were in nonattainment for particulate matter after controlling for lung cancer fatalities. Chapter 2 looks at the wage and employment effects of the regulations set forth by the 1990 Amendment in the pharmaceutical industry. I find that while the CAA had a positive impact on wages, the evidence on its effects on employment is more mixed. These effects disappear when county data is collapsed to the state level.