Over the last few decades, air quality in California has improved. Yet all urban centers and
many other areas of the state still violate the Federal standard for ozone. Even more areas
violate the stricter California State standard. The San Joaquin and South Central Coast Air
Basins are considered to be in “serious” nonattainment of the standard, while Sacramento
and the Southeast Desert Modified Air Quality Management Area are in “severe”
nonattainment. As is well known, the Los Angles area is in “extreme” nonattainment of the …

This dissertation explores economic incentives for the control of car pollution. A tax on
emissions can efficiently induce all of the cheapest forms of abatement. However, the
technology is not yet available to measure and tax each car's total emissions. In the first
essay, I use a simple model with identical consumers to show conditions under which the
same efficiency can be attained by the combination of a gas tax, a tax on engine size, and a
subsidy to pollution control equipment. In a model with heterogeneous consumers, the same …