10.17889/E112006V1
Sandler, Ryan
Replication data for: Clunkers or Junkers? Adverse Selection in a Vehicle Retirement Program
ICPSR Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
2012
10.1257/pol.4.4.253
10.1257/pol.4.4.253
1
Vehicle retirement programs have become popular tools of public policy for reducing pollution. The efficacy of these programs is difficult to measure, as it is difficult to tell how much a vehicle would have polluted otherwise. I estimate that counterfactual using data from a long-running local program in California. I utilize the universe
of emissions inspections from the California Smog Check Program to construct vehicle usage histories of retired cars and similar vehicles which did not retire early. I find that the program's cost-effectiveness steadily declined over time because of the depreciation of the vehicle fleet, while adverse selection remained a problem throughout. (JEL D82, Q53, Q58, R48)