Spatial Agglomeration And Pollution Reduction

Spatial agglomeration of economic activities may reduce industrial pollution intensity. Using China’s provincial panel data, we measure the degree of spatial agglomeration within a province by the within-province inequality of city-level population size and employee size of secondary industry, respectively. We find that spatial agglomeration of population and economic activities have negative effects on the pollution emission per unit of industrial GDP. Raising the within-province Gini coefficient of city-level urban population size by one sample standard deviation (0.0813), industrial COD intensity will be reduced by about19.03%, the proportion of industrial wastewater meeting discharge standards will go up by about2.27percentage points, industrial soot intensity will be reduced by about14.54%, and industrial dust intensity will be reduced by about22.49%, ceteris paribus. The above findings imply that spatial agglomeration is in favor of pollution reduction.