Does environmental policy affect scaling laws between population and pollution? Evidence from American metropolitan areas.

ABSTRACT: Modern cities are engines of production, innovation, and growth. However, urbanization also increases both local and global pollution from household consumption and firms' production. Do emissions change proportionately to city size or does pollution tend to outpace or lag urbanization? Do emissions scale differently with population versus economic growth or are emissions, population, and economic growth inextricably linked? How are the scaling relationships between emissions, population, and economic growth affected by environmental regulation? This paper examines the link between urbanization, economic growth and pollution using data from Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States between 1999 and 2011. We find that the emissions of local air pollution in these MSAs scale

SUBMITTER: Muller NZ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5549900 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature