Estimating the effect of air pollution on road safety using atmospheric temperature inversions

Sager, Lutz (2019) Estimating the effect of air pollution on road safety using atmospheric temperature inversions. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 98. ISSN 1096-0449

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Abstract

Does air quality influence road safety? We estimate the effect of increased air pollution on the number of road traffic accidents in the United Kingdom between 2009 and 2014. To address concerns of spurious correlation we exploit atmospheric temperature inversions as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in daily air pollution levels. We find an increase of 0.3 − 0.6% in the number of vehicles involved in accidents per day for each additional 1μg/m3 of PM2.5. The finding suggests that less safe roads may present a large and previously overlooked cost of air pollution. The results are robust to a number of specifications and across various sub-samples.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2019 The Author
Divisions:	Methodology Geography & Environment
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences
Date Deposited:	13 Aug 2019 09:36
Last Modified:	16 Apr 2024 16:03
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/101345

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