Minoru Nakada's Lab

In recent years, environmental problems have expanded in terms of time and geographical dimensions. With regard to the time dimension, we could argue whether economic growth always has a negative impact on the environment and if we should give up economic growth to conserve the environment.

Traditionally, both economic theories and empirical analyses have supported the intuition that economic growth and environmental conservation cannot be compatible. However, if environmental policies promote R&D activities and economic structures become more technology oriented rather than resource intensive, there are some possibilities that in the long run improvements in the environment may be compatible with economic growth.

If environmental policies could be compatible with economic growth, why are such policies not easily implemented? If damage costs of an environmental problem and costs of policy implementation are not equally distributed, introducing an environmental policy may result in a conflict of interest among citizens or nations which might lead to a delay in policy implementation. Moreover, there are some possibilities that a group of agents may have an incentive to influence the political process of policy implementation.

From a geographical point of view, we are also studying how the movements of people and economic activities will affect the environment. We are constructing a model examining to what extent trade and migration have an impact on environmental policies.