Urbanisation in China has long been held back by various restrictions on land and internal migration but has taken off since the 1990s, as these impediments started to be gradually relaxed. People have moved in large numbers to richer cities, where productivity is higher and has increased...

Climate change and outdoor air pollution are two of the most challenging environmental issues that modern society faces. These challenges are strongly linked through their emission sources, the sectors they affect and the policies that can be implemented to reduce emissions. They also interact...

Based on an in-depth literature review and responses to a survey among OECD member countries, this paper discusses the use of flexibility mechanisms in environmental regulations. Such mechanisms can provide flexibility as to how a given environmental improvement is achieved, regarding where...

China, Japan and Korea have deployed a multiplicity of co-operation efforts at different levels of government to promote air quality and curb transboundary pollution. This paper identifies the existing arrangements for air quality co-operation in North East Asia and provides guidance to advance...

Four decades of rapid economic expansion in China has generated enormous pressure on the environment, natural resources and public health. Alarming smog outbreaks during the 2010-13 period prompted the government to introduce a number of reforms to control air pollution, including a...

This study provides the first evidence that air pollution causes economy-wide reductions in market economic activity based on data for Europe. The analysis combines satellite-based measures of air pollution with statistics on regional economic activity at the NUTS-3 level throughout the European...

This paper presents a productivity growth measure that explicitly accounts for natural capital as an input factor and for undesirable goods, or “bads”, as an output of the production process. The discussion focuses on the extension of productivity measurement for bad outputs and estimates of...