AbstractThe increasing importance of pollution controls as a part of government regulatory activities has motivated considerable concern about the economic impact of these activities. This question is of considerable importance, because environmental quality goals are sometimes in conflict with other objectives such as full employment and economic growth. Policy‐makers are thus faced with the task of identifying and measuring the trade‐offs between these various objectives. But the measurement of these objectives requires information on their economic impacts. This paper develops a general equilibrium model with pollution specifications which can be used to identify the economic impacts of pollution‐control policies. The particular pollution‐control policy addressed is an environmental standards approach. The model is based on a technique that combines an explicit representation of consumer demand behaviour vis‐à‐vis linear aggregate demand functions with activ