Please join this ACDE seminar co-badged with AJRC.
Yoshifumi Konishi (Keio University, speaker) and Akari Ono (Keio University)
We study how transportation networks shape the geographic distribution of industrial pollution in a spatial economy with heterogeneous environmental regulation. We develop a quantitative spatial model incorporating a regional transportation network, Copeland-Taylor production technology, and city-specific environmental regulation. In the model, each city’s equilibrium pollution depends on market access and may decrease or increase as market access grows, depending on the relative magnitudes of scale, composition, and technique effects. The model identifies “indirect pollution leakage”: transportation investments increase market access, raising demand for pollution and its price, which creates incentives for firms to relocate to cities with less stringent regulation. We test these predictions by exploiting the transportation megaproject under the Build-A-New-Japan initiative, which induced sharp cross-city variation in transport-cost declines. We estimate the elasticity of city-level sulfur dioxide concentrations with respect to market access, combining a recentered instrumental-variable approach with a difference-in-differences design. We find that this elasticity is negative and larger in magnitude for cities facing tighter regulation, implying that increased market access induces industrial pollution to disperse. These findings are consistent with the model’s predictions and suggest the need to integrate transportation and environmental policy.
Professor Konishi is an environmental economist working on environmental regulation, transportation, and market-based environmental policy. His research has been published in top field journals including JAERE and JEEM. He will be visiting ANU until 23 August and is keen to meet with interested faculty and students during his stay.
Time: 1:15–2:30 pm, Tuesday 11 August 2026
Venue: Miller Theatre, Old Canberra House and online via this Zoom: https://anu.zoom.us/j/83051034863?pwd=nZne2h5kW7T7od8gGVvyCIMy2MVoSG.1