Circular economy (CE) is a sustainable development strategy that is being proposed to tackle urgent problems of environmental degradation and resource scarcity. CE's 3R principles are to reduce, reuse and recycle materials. The principles account for a circular system where all materials are...

This paper establishes a simple theoretical framework which comprises key forces that shape the structure and interrelation of cities to study the interdependencies between urban evolution and the environment. We focus on the potential of the unfettered market forces to economize on emissions. A...

This study uses 1971-2013 panel data to explore the implications of growth, wealth disparities and energy consumption on carbon emissions in a sample of Next-Eleven (N-11) countries. It uses modern econometric techniques to highlight a long-run interplay between selected variables in the carbon...

Differential access to health care is commonly cited as a source of heterogeneity in the health effects of environmental exposure, yet little causal evidence exists to support such claims. We test this hypothesis by utilizing exogenous variation in both access to health care and environmental...

Why do damages from changes in environmental quality differ across and within countries? Causal investigation of this question has been challenging because differences may stem from heterogeneity in cumulative exposure or differences in socioeconomic factors such as income. We revisit the...

We provide evidence that lower fertility can simultaneously increase income per capita and lower carbon emissions, eliminating a trade-off central to most policies aimed at slowing global climate change. We estimate the effect of lower fertility on carbon emissions accounting for the fact that...

This paper develops a micro-founded city systems model with an endogenous number of cities to explore whether local governments establish the optimal city size when production processes involve environmental pollution. Our analysis delivers two key insights. First, if an optimal scheme to...

This paper studies how individual characteristics, institutions, and their interaction influence moral decisions. We validate a moral paradigm focusing on the willingness to accept harming third parties. Consequences of moral decisions are real. We explore how moral behavior varies with...

Driving restrictions are popular interventions in rapidly urbanizing developing countries. Their relatively inexpensive implementation appeals to the pressing need to reduce traffic congestion and pollution. Their effectiveness however, remains contested. Using high frequency data from the...

Ground-level ozone has been shown to have significant health consequences from short-term exposure, and as such has been regulated in the U.S. since the 1970s by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Ozone is not emitted directly; instead formation occurs due to a complex, Leontief-like...