Applied Environmental and Urban Economics Research at RSUE

I'm happy to announce that I've accepted an offer to be a Co-Editor of Regional Science and Urban Economics.     Dan McMillen, Yves Zenou and Giovanni Perri will continue as "the Editors".   My role will be to review and edit submissions related to applied environmental and urban economics.  My good friend, mentor and co-author John Quigley was the editor of this journal for many years and I'm proud to follow in his footsteps.  I encourage young researchers writing new papers on environmental and urban topics to submit their applied work to RSUE.

In the past, I have published seven papers in RSUE and I believe that all of them are very good.

The first paper has 91 Google Scholar citations, #3 has 63 cites, #5 has 61 cites, #2 has 45 cites and the other papers are pretty recent.

1. Kahn, Matthew E., 1997. "Particulate pollution trends in the United States," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 87-107, February. 
2. Cragg, Michael I. ; Kahn, Matthew E., 1999. "Climate consumption and climate pricing from 1940 to 1990," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 519-539, July.
3. Kahn, Matthew E., 2003. "The geography of US pollution intensive trade: evidence from 1958 to 1994," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 383-400, July.4
4. Kahn, Matthew E., 2009. "Regional growth and exposure to nearby coal fired power plant emissions," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 15-22, January.
5. Zheng, Siqi; Kahn, Matthew E. & Liu, Hongyu, 2010. "Towards a system of open cities in China: Home prices, FDI flows and air quality in 35 major cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 1-10, January.
6. Zheng, Siqi  Kahn, Matthew E. & Sun, Weizeng & Luo, Danglun, 2014. "Incentives for China's urban mayors to mitigate pollution externalities: The role of the central government and public environmentalism," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 61-71
7. Kahn, Matthew E. Kok, Nils, 2014. "The capitalization of green labels in the California housing market," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 25-34.

Paper #1 was the first paper in the Clean Air Act's unintended consequences literature. This paper was floating around before Vern Henderson's 1996 AER paper or Michael Greenstone's 2000 JPE.

Paper #2: is my first LasPeyres Price index paper for non-market local public goods (in this case climate amenities).

Paper #3: is a good paper examining gross flows of trade between the U.S and other nations.  African nations emerge as pollution havens for goods that are cheap to ship.  Arik Levinson has worked on some of the ideas presented in that paper.

Paper #4 is an underrated paper.   The coal power plants are in the Northeast and Midwest and the population is moving away from these dirty sources.  This means that regional migration shifts are reducing Pigouvian externalities associated with pollution exposure.

Paper #5 is one of my first China papers and covers several issues including documenting a negative correlation between FDI and urban air pollution in the 2000s and documenting an environmental kuznets curve within China across its major cities.

Paper #6 is likely to start a literature on urban leadership's role in determining pollution outcomes. We document that Chinese mayors' chances of being promoted are now tied to local pollution progress and energy efficiency progress.

Paper #7 has been widely discussed in the blogosphere related to the real estate returns to green housing.