City Shapes' Contribution to Why Donald Trump Won

Dascher, Kristof (2020): City Shapes' Contribution to Why Donald Trump Won.

Abstract

This paper identifies (unobservable) centrists and decentrists. Centrists support, whereas decentrists oppose, taxing carbon. The paper divides into two parts. Its theory derives estimators of centrists and decentrists; its empirical part provides estimates for U.S. metros and takes them to the 2008 and 2016 U.S. presidential elections. The paper finds that Donald Trump's shift away from the consensus on global warming has gained him 280,000 votes he else would not have enjoyed, in cities where decentrists were strong. The paper concludes that sprawling (compact) cities are less (more) likely to embrace carbon taxation, and provides a new rationale for globally advocating compact urban planning.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Compact City, Global Warming, Carbon Taxation, 2016 US Presidential Election
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D72 - Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q54 - Climate ; Natural Disasters and Their Management ; Global Warming; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R5 - Regional Government Analysis > R52 - Land Use and Other Regulations

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