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  5. The Role of People vs. Places in Individual Carbon Emissions

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

The Role of People vs. Places in Individual Carbon Emissions

  • Eva Lyubich
American Economic Review (Forthcoming)

Abstract

There is substantial spatial heterogeneity in household carbon emissions. I leverage movers in two decades of administrative Decennial Census and American Community Survey data to estimate place effects – the amount by which carbon emissions change for the same household living in different places – for almost 1,000 cities and roughly 61,500 neighborhoods across the US. I estimate that place effects account for 14-23 percent of overall heterogeneity. A change in neighborhood-level place effects from one standard deviation above the mean to one below would reduce household carbon emissions from residential energy and commuting by about 40 percent.

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