Pollution and city size: can cities be too small?
- We study optimal and equilibrium sizes of cities in a city system model with pollution. Pollution is a function of population size. If pollution is local or per-capita pollution increases with population, equilibrium cities are too large under symmetry; with asymmetric cities, the largest cities are too large and the smallest too small. When pollution is global and per-capita pollution declines with city size, cities may be too small under symmetry; with asymmetric cities, the largest cities are too small and the smallest too large if the marginal damage of pollution is large enough. We calibrate the model to US cities and find that the largest cities may be undersized by 3-4%.
| Author details: | Rainald BorckORCiDGND, Takatoshi TabuchiORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lby017 |
| ISSN: | 1468-2702 |
| ISSN: | 1468-2710 |
| Title of parent work (English): | Journal of Economic Geography |
| Publisher: | Oxford Univ. Press |
| Place of publishing: | Oxford |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of first publication: | 2018/04/10 |
| Publication year: | 2019 |
| Release date: | 2020/11/11 |
| Tag: | Optimal city size distribution; agglomeration; pollution |
| Volume: | 19 |
| Issue: | 5 |
| Number of pages: | 26 |
| First page: | 995 |
| Last Page: | 1020 |
| Funding institution: | German Science Foundation (DFG)German Research Foundation (DFG); RIETI |
| Organizational units: | Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Geowissenschaften |
| DDC classification: | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 55 Geowissenschaften, Geologie / 550 Geowissenschaften |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
| Publishing method: | Open Access |
| Open Access / Green Open-Access |
