Coal Smoke, City Growth, and the Costs of the Industrial Revolution
首次严谨估计了工业燃煤空气污染对英国城市长期增长的影响，发现当地工业用煤显著降低了城市就业和人口增长，并指出若提高燃煤效率，1911年英国城市化率会更高。
Abstract This article provides the first rigorous estimates of how industrial air pollution from coal burning affects long-run city growth. I introduce a new theoretically grounded strategy for estimating this relationship and apply it to data from highly polluted British cities from 1851 to 1911. I show that local industrial coal use substantially reduced long-run city employment and population growth. Moreover, a counterfactual analysis suggests that plausible improvements in coal-use efficiency would have led to a higher urbanisation rate in Britain by 1911. These findings contribute to our understanding of the effects of air pollution and the environmental costs of industrialisation.