Labor Displacement and Air-Pollution Control

Economic efficiency and minimizing labor displacement may be mutually unattainable goals in regional air-pollution control planning. This paper develops a model in which pollution-control methods are characterized by regional labor-displacement coefficients as well as conventional cost coefficients. It employs the lexicographic technique, minimizing first the economic cost and then the labor displacement required to achieve a specific set of air-quality goals for the St. Louis airshed in 1975. Some meaningful shifts in the vector of optimal control methods are observed in this sequence. However, some limitations in the lexicographic method become apparent in the analysis.