Abstract
This paper extends the hedonic technique of adjusting for quality change to a new area: the construction of a quality‐adjusted automobile fuel efficiency index. This index, which holds constant a wide range of characteristics that affect observed fuel economy, rises by over 20 percent from 1949 until the late 1960s. The advent of increasingly stringent antipollution regulations coincides with its decline through the mid‐1970s. Thereafter, the constant‐quality index rises sharply. This paper will demonstrate that the fall and rise over the last decade coincide with the reductions in allowable automobile exhaust emissions and the rising relative price of petroleum, respectively.

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