The Productivity Consequences of Pollution-Induced Migration in China
研究量化了污染如何通过改变技能劳动力的空间分布来影响中国的总体生产率和福利，发现减少污染带来的生产率提升几乎与清洁空气的直接健康收益相当。
We quantify how pollution affects aggregate productivity and welfare in spatial equilibrium. We show that skilled workers in China emigrate away from polluted cities. These patterns are evident under various empirical specifications, such as when instrumenting for pollution using upwind power plants, or thermal inversions. Pollution changes the spatial distribution of skilled and unskilled workers, and wage returns by location. We quantify the loss in aggregate productivity due to this re-sorting by estimating a spatial equilibrium model. Counterfactual simulations show that reducing pollution increases productivity through spatial re-sorting by approximately as much as the direct health benefits of clean air.