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Impact of the First-Time Car Buyer Program on the Environmental Cost of Air Pollution in Bangkok
April 20, 2017DECRG Kuala Lumpur Seminar Series

Despite facing with air pollution caused by traffic congestion that is ranked top ten in the world, the Thai government launched a tax refund policy for first time car buyers between September 16, 2011 and December 31, 2012 aiming to give an opportunity to low-to-middle income people to own their first car with discounted price and stimulate economic growth. Although past studies evaluated the impact of the program on several aspects, the environment aspect has been ignored.

The objective of this study is therefore to evaluate the impact of the first-time car buyer program on environmental cost of air pollution in Bangkok using hourly air pollution records from monitoring stations for five major pollutants and the happiness data. The article finds that the program increased the levels of air pollution. Using the estimated willingness to pay for a unit reduction of each pollutant, this study reveals that the value of total environmental cost generated from the program is approximately equal to $6.173 billion dollars annually.

  • Dr Witsanu Attavanich

    Assistant Professor, Economics Department, Faculty of Economics, Kasetsart University
    Dr Witsanu Attavanich is an assistant professor of Economics Department at the Faculty of Economics, Kasetsart University. He received his BSc in Economics at Kasetsart University with first-class honors. He received his MA in Economics at Thammasat University and Ph.D. in the field of environmental and resource economics at Texas A&M University, USA in 2011. He pursued his postdoctoral training at Rutgers University, USA and served as a visiting research fellow of Summer Research Institute, Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford, UK. His recent research efforts have largely involved policy analysis (mainly in climate change, agriculture, land use, energy, transportation, development and environment). He teaches courses in microeconomic theory, econometrics for public program and policy evaluation, energy economics, managerial economics, and environmental economics. He received an outstanding award for research and innovation in the field of social science and humanities from Kasetsart University in 2014. His contributed report won the 2016 Abraham Lincoln Honor Award for Increasing Global Food Security from the United States Department of Agriculture. He serves as an editorial board of Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences and Journal of Economics (Chiang Mai University), and also serves as an associate editor of Applied Economics Journal.
EVENT DETAILS
  • WHEN: Thursday, April 20, 2017; 12:30-2:00PM
  • WHERE: World Bank Malaysia Office, Level 3, Sasana Kijang, No. 2, Jalan Dato¡¯ Onn
  • RSVP: Kindly RSVP by Wednesday, April 19, 2017