Environmental policy, pollution and economic growth
Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - 13:02
in Earth & Climate
As the global population continues to urbanize in pursuit of a higher quality of life, the need to investigate the trade-off between the economic benefits and environmental costs of urbanization has never been greater. More than half of the world's population currently lives in urban areas, and the United Nations projects another 2.5 billion people will move to cities by 2050. While firms cluster in cities to recruit talent and realize higher productivity gains, how pollution scales with population growth remains unknown. This scaling relationship is crucial for policymaking: do environmental regulations that reduce the pollution emissions from urbanization also decrease the economic benefits from this urbanization?