Matthew Kahn
About Matthew Kahn
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Books by Matthew Kahn
“Going Remote: How the Flexible Work Economy Can Improve Our Lives and Our Cities” (2022)
Going Remote: How the Flexible Work Economy Can Improve Our Lives and Our Cities
“Fundamentals of Environmental and Urban Economics: Matthew E. Kahn” (2013)
This book presents a broad overview of the key issues in modern environmental economics with a focus on understanding and solving urban pollution challenges in developed and developing nations. By embracing "free market environmentalism", this book explores how cities and nations can achieve the "win-win" of economic growth and reduced urban pollution. Special attention is paid to the incentives of households, firms and governments in reducing the production of pollution. The book examines a number of urban pollution challenges including; air, water, noise, garbage pollution and the global challenge of climate change. Unlike other environmental economics books, this book focuses on how to harness free market capitalism to solve environmental challenges.Matthew E. Kahn is a Professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment, the Department of Economics, the Department of Public Policy, the UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA School of Law. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the IZA. He serves as the Research Director at the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. Before joining the UCLA faculty in January 2007, he taught at Columbia and the Fletcher School at Tufts University. He has served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard, Stanford and the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment (Brookings Institution Press 2006) and the co-author of Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War (Princeton University Press 2008). He is the author of Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter World (Basic Books 2010). His research areas include; environmental, urban, energy and real estate economics.
“Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future” (2010)
Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future
“Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment” (2006)
What is a green city? What does it mean to say that San Francisco or Vancouver is more "green" than Houston or Beijing? When does urban growth lower environmental quality, and when does it yield environmental gains? How can cities deal with the environmental challenges posed by growth? These are the questions Matthew Kahn takes on in this smart and engaging book.Written in a lively, accessible style, Green Cities takes the reader on a tour of the extensive economic literature on the environmental consequences of urban growth. Kahn starts with an exploration of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC)—the hypothesis that the relationship between environmental quality and per capita income follows a bell-shaped curve. He then analyzes several critiques of the EKC and discusses the implications of growth in urban population and surface area, as well as income. The concluding chapter addresses the role of cities in promoting climate change and asks how cities in turn are likely to be affected by this trend.As Kahn points out, although economics is known as the "dismal science," economists are often quite optimistic about the relationship between urban development and the environment. In contrast, many ecologists and environmentalists remain wary of the environmental consequences of free-market growth. Rather than try to settle this dispute, this book conveys the excitement of an ongoing debate. Green Cities does not provide easy answers complex dilemmas. It does something more important—it provides the tools readers need to analyze these issues on their own.
At a glanceMatthew Kahn
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