While the NY Times doesn't report any NBA news today, it is filled with other interesting stuff.
1. The local externality imposed by New York City's old garbage trucks. Yes, these trucks pick up the garbage but they emit plenty of particulate matter and cleaning this up will cost millions. Who should pay that bill?
2. A new sustainable beef business is launched in California. Perhaps green products can thrive under specific circumstances.
3. The horrible news from the Philippines related to the death toll from the typhoon highlights the importance of economic development and providing trusted information to nudge coastal households to live in higher quality structures and to move to higher ground before storms hit.
4. The Wall Street Journal has a great section today called; "The Power of Tomorrow" focused on the future of different energy sources and the market and political barriers they face to enhance our energy supply.
Outsourcing in Cities
Catherine Rampell has written an excellent piece about how we allocate our scarce time. Note that neither the word "city" nor "population density" appear in her article. Robinson Crusoe would not have had the option of outsourcing his cooking or dry cleaning. Outsourcing and urbanization and specialization go hand in hand.
Conspicuous Consumption in Los Angeles
I was in a West Los Angeles parking lot next to where my son takes fencing lessons. While I agree that this is not a location chosen at random, take a look at the makes of these three parked cars. From left to right, I see Tesla, Lexus, Tesla. Why do the wealthy live in Los Angeles? Is it because this is a productive place? Are these folks rich because they live in Los Angeles?
Fixed Effects
A psychologist reports that those who smiled in their College yearbook photo were much less likely to subsequently divorce than those serious people who didn't smile. The causal effect here is likely to be due to a 3rd variable; "stress and attitude". Is it the case that easy going people are more likely to smile and live a happier life?
Why do I like this finding?
Why do I like this finding?
The Evolving Geography of China's Industrial Production
In joint research, I have just released a new NBER Working Paper that examines the causes and consequences of shifts in the economic geography of China's industrial production. Led Zeppelin recorded a famous song called; "The Song Remains the Same". This applies to this piece of my research. Back in 1999, I published a JUE paper using U.S data examining the air quality benefits of Rust Belt decline. Cities such as Pittsburgh experienced sharp improvements in quality of life.
My new paper argues that a similar dynamic is now playing out within China. Coastal rich cities feature high land prices, high labor prices and increasingly stringent environmental regulation. These factors encourage land intensive manufacturing to leave these cities and to move to Western China and to leave China. The powerful central government and local Western Mayors are offering incentives for such factories to move West. This migration brings about some income convergence across regions but also impacts the spatial distribution of pollution and quality of life. We survey the emerging literature on China's industrialization and present a lot of new empirical evidence in this paper.
My new paper argues that a similar dynamic is now playing out within China. Coastal rich cities feature high land prices, high labor prices and increasingly stringent environmental regulation. These factors encourage land intensive manufacturing to leave these cities and to move to Western China and to leave China. The powerful central government and local Western Mayors are offering incentives for such factories to move West. This migration brings about some income convergence across regions but also impacts the spatial distribution of pollution and quality of life. We survey the emerging literature on China's industrialization and present a lot of new empirical evidence in this paper.
The Evolving Geography of China's Industrial Production: Implications for Pollution Dynamics and Urban Quality of Life
Siqi Zheng, Cong Sun, Ye Qi, Matthew E. Kahn
China’s rapid economic growth has been fueled by industrialization and urbanization. Given its export focus, this industrialization was spatially concentrated in the coastal eastern cities. Over the last decade, a spatial transformation has taken place leading to a deindustrialization of the rich coastal cities and sharp industrial growth in the inland cities. This survey examines recent work that studies the economic geography of industrial production, per-capita income, pollution and quality of life in China’s cities. We focus on the interaction between firms, local governments and the central government that together determine the new economic geography of industry and pollution within China.
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