The effect of manufacturing agglomerations on smog pollution

Manufacturing agglomerations are among the most important urban economic activities. The spatial agglomeration of production factors not only drives the growth of urban economy, but also affects its ecological environment. This study investigates the mechanism through which manufacturing agglomerations affect urban smog pollution from the aspects of economies of scale, technology spillovers, and spatial spillover effects. Based on an STIRPAT model, we employ panel data from 2003 to 2013 of 283 Chinese cities to estimate the impact of manufacturing agglomerations on smog pollution. We find that manufacturing agglomerations decrease smog pollution in local city as well as in neighboring cities, due to technology spillovers. Furthermore, cities with different scales witness different improvement effects-only when the city scale is within a certain range can smog pollution be improved by manufacturing agglomerations. Additionally, the larger the scale of the city, the greater the improvement. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.