TY - JOUR AU - Holland, Stephen P AU - Mansur, Erin T AU - Muller, Nicholas Z AU - Yates, Andrew J TI - Distributional Effects of Air Pollution from Electric Vehicle Adoption JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 22862 PY - 2016 Y2 - November 2016 DO - 10.3386/w22862 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22862 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22862.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Stephen P. Holland Bryan School of Business and Economics University of North Carolina, Greensboro P.O. Box 26165 Greensboro, NC 27402-6165 Tel: 336/334-4925 Fax: 336/334-4089 E-Mail: sphollan@uncg.edu Erin T. Mansur Dartmouth College 100 Tuck Hall Hanover, NH 03755 Tel: (603) 646-2398 Fax: (603) 646-0995 E-Mail: erin.mansur@dartmouth.edu Nicholas Z. Muller Department of Engineering, and Public Policy Tepper School of Business Carnegie Mellon University 4215 Tepper Quad 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Tel: 412-268-8121 E-Mail: nicholas.muller74@gmail.com Andrew J. Yates Department of Economics and Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill CB 3305 Chapel Hill, NC 27599 E-Mail: ajyates@email.unc.edu M1 - published as Stephen P. Holland, Erin T. Mansur, Nicholas Z. Muller, Andrew J. Yates. "Distributional Effects of Air Pollution from Electric Vehicle Adoption," in Tatyana Deryugina, Don Fullerton, and Billy Pizer, organizers, "Energy Policy Tradeoffs between Economic Efficiency and Distributional Equity" Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, volume 6, number S1 (University of Chicago Press) (2019) AB - We examine the distributional effects of changes in local air pollution from driving electric vehicles in the United States. We employ an econometric model to estimate power plant emissions and an integrated assessment model to value damages in air pollution from both electric and gasoline vehicles. Using the locations of currently registered electric vehicles, we find that people living in census block groups with median income greater than about $65,000 receive positive environmental benefits from these vehicles while those below this threshold receive negative environmental benefits. Asian and Hispanic residents receive positive environmental benefits, but White and Black residents receive negative environmental benefits. In multivariate analyses, environmental benefits are positively correlated with income and urban measures, conditional on racial composition. In addition, conditional on income and urbanization, separate regressions find environmental benefits to be positively related with Asian and Hispanic block-group population shares, negatively correlated with White share, and uncorrelated with Black share. Environmental benefits tend to be larger in states offering purchase subsidies. However, for these states, an increase in subsidy size is associated with a decrease in created environmental benefits. ER -