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"Kahn, Matthew E"
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المدينة المناخية : كيف لمدننا أن تزدهر في مستقبل أشد حرا ؟
أهمية هذا الكتاب من كونه يقدم دراسات جادة عن مستقبل التغير المناخي. في هذا الكتاب يبين ماثيو خان وهو من أبرز خبراء اقتصاد البيئة واقتصاد المدن. أن مستقبلنا يكمن في قدرتنا على التأقلم. فالمدن والمناطق ستتحول ببطء بينما نغير نحن سلوكنا ونطور محيطنا استجابة لتغير المناخ. والكاتب في نثره الطريف والجاد والملتزم يبين لنا كيف سيحدث ذلك. وكتابه لا يخلو من تفاؤل حيال حياتنا في مدن المستقبل.
BOOK
A New Era of Pollution Progress in Urban China?
Over the last 30 years, China's economy has boomed. This trend has lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty but it has also sharply increased local, regional, and global pollution levels. We look at the rise in air pollution over recent decades, and the perhaps surprising finding that in many of China's urban areas, levels of particulates (of less than 10 microns) have been decreasing during the last 10 to 15 years. We then turn to the costs and tradeoffs of air pollution, including costs to human health, reductions in worker productivity, and how people are seeking to reduce their exposure to pollution as shown by compensating differentials in real estate prices and purchases of masks and air filters. We discuss how rising incomes tend to raise the demand for environmental amenities and thus increase political pressure for environmental protection, and then we turn to the policy tools that China has used to reduce pollution. We conclude by arguing that as China's government is preparing for an additional 300 million people to move to urban areas over the next 30 years, it will have a number of opportunities for China to reduce pollution through a shift from manufacturing to services, along with various steps to improve energy efficiency and resource conservation. Overall, it seems that China is on track to improve its environmental performance in the years ahead.
Journal Article
Heroes & cowards : the social face of war
Heroes and Cowards demonstrates the role that social capital plays in people's decisions. The makeup of various companies--whether soldiers were of the same ethnicity, age, and occupation--influenced whether soldiers remained loyal or whether they deserted. Costa and Kahn discuss how the soldiers benefited from friendships, what social factors allowed some to survive the POW camps while others died, and how punishments meted out for breaking codes of conduct affected men after the war. The book also examines the experience of African-American soldiers and makes important observations about how their comrades shaped their lives. --from publisher description
Book
China’s bullet trains facilitate market integration and mitigate the cost of megacity growth
Megacity growth in the developing world is fueled by a desire to access their large local labor markets. Growing megacities suffer from high levels of traffic congestion and pollution, which degrade local quality of life. Transportation technology that allows individuals to access the megacity without living within its boundaries offers potentially large social benefits, because individuals can enjoy the benefits of urban agglomeration while not paying megacity real estate rents and suffering from the city’s social costs. This paper presents evidence supporting the claim that China’s bullet trains are playing this role. The bullet train is regarded as one of the most significant technological breakthroughs in passenger transportation developed in the second half of the 20th century. Starting in 2007, China has introduced several new bullet trains that connect megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou with nearby cities. Through facilitating market integration, bullet trains will stimulate the development of second- and third-tier cities. By offering households and firms a larger menu of location alternatives, bullet trains help to protect the quality of life of the growing urban population. We document that this transport innovation is associated with rising real estate prices in the nearby secondary cities.
Journal Article
Blue skies over Beijing : economic growth and the environment in China
\" Over the last thirty years, even as China's economy has grown by leaps and bounds, the environmental quality of its urban centers has precipitously declined due to heavy industrial output and coal consumption. The country is currently the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitter and several of the most polluted cities in the world are in China. Yet, millions of people continue moving to its cities seeking opportunities. Blue Skies over Beijing investigates the ways that China's urban development impacts local and global environmental challenges. Focusing on day-to-day choices made by the nation's citizens, families, and government, Matthew Kahn and Siqi Zheng examine how Chinese urbanites are increasingly demanding cleaner living conditions and consider where China might be headed in terms of sustainable urban growth. Kahn and Zheng delve into life in China's cities from the personal perspectives of the rich, middle class, and poor, and how they cope with the stresses of pollution. Urban parents in China have a strong desire to protect their children from environmental risk, and calls for a better quality of life from the rising middle class places pressure on government officials to support greener policies. Using the historical evolution of American cities as a comparison, the authors predict that as China's economy moves away from heavy manufacturing toward cleaner sectors, many of China's cities should experience environmental progress in upcoming decades. Looking at pressing economic and environmental issues in urban China, Blue Skies over Beijing shows that a cleaner China will mean more social stability for the nation and the world. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Understanding China's Urban Pollution Dynamics
China's ongoing urban economic growth has sharply increased the population's per capita income, lowered the count of people living below the poverty line, and caused major environmental problems. We survey the growing literature investigating the causes and consequences of China's urban pollution challenges. We begin by studying how urban population and industrial growth impacts local pollution levels and greenhouse gas production. As the urban population grows richer, its demand for private transportation and electricity sharply increases. Such privately beneficial activity exacerbates urban pollution externalities. Facing these severe environmental challenges, China's urbanites increasingly demand quality of life progress. We survey the emerging literature investigating the demand for environmental progress in China. Progress in mitigating externalities hinges on whether the powerful central and local governments choose to address these issues. We analyze the political economy of whether government officials have strong incentives to tackle lingering urban externalities. We conclude by discussing future research opportunities at the intersection of environmental and urban economics.
Journal Article
Unlocking the potential of post-industrial cities
\"This book explores why the center cities of Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis have underperformed for more than 40 years, from 1970 to the present. The authors' investigation of how these cities and their residents can escape the poverty trap is informed by quantitative social science research\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Air pollution lowers high skill public sector worker productivity in China
China's urbanites continue to be exposed to high levels of air pollution. Such pollution exposure raises mortality risk, lowers the day-to-day sentiment of the population and lowers outdoor worker productivity. Using a unique set of data for Chinese judges, we document that local air pollution also lowers the productivity of high skilled government officials who work indoors. Our new evidence on the effects of air pollution highlights both the challenge that pollution poses for quality of life and workforce productivity and indicates that the Chinese urban elites gain co-benefits when their cities burn less fossil fuel.
Journal Article
ENERGY CONSERVATION \NUDGES\ AND ENVIRONMENTALIST IDEOLOGY: EVIDENCE FROM A RANDOMIZED RESIDENTIAL ELECTRICITY FIELD EXPERIMENT
\"Nudges\" are being widely promoted to encourage energy conservation. We show that the popular electricity conservation \"nudge\" of providing feedback to households on own and peers' home electricity usage in a home electricity report is two to four times more effective with political liberals than with conservatives. Political conservatives are more likely than liberals to opt out of receiving the home electricity report and to report disliking the report. Our results suggest that energy conservation nudges need to be targeted to be most effective.
Journal Article
Water Pollution Progress at Borders: The Role of Changes in China's Political Promotion Incentives
At political boundaries, local leaders have weak incentives to reduce polluting activity because the social costs are borne by downstream neighbors. This paper exploits a natural experiment set in China in which the central government changed the local political promotion criteria and thus incentivized local officials to reduce border pollution along specific criteria. We document evidence of pollution progress with respect to targeted criteria at province boundaries. Heavy metal pollutants, not targeted by the central government, have not decreased in concentration after the regime shift. Using data on the economic geography of key industrial water polluters, we explore possible mechanisms.
Journal Article