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Submission Deadline: 31 July 2025
Guest Editors: Jorge Alexander Bonilla (Universidad de Los Andes); Rohini Somanathan (Delhi School of Economics)
Environment and Development Economics seeks to publish a special issue on the political economy of clean air transitions. The issue will be guest edited by Jorge Bonilla at Universidad de Los Andes and Rohini Somanathan at the Delhi School of Economics.
Poor air quality sporadically plagues some of the richest cities in the world and is endemic in the rapidly growing urban metropolises of the global South, where weak governance and poverty together limit the ability of cities to transition to clean fuel and efficient public transport. Environment and Development Economics invites submissions for a special issue collating case-studies of policies to improve urban air quality. The focus of the volume will be on the political and institutional responses to policy change. The purpose of the Special Issue is to advance our understanding of why changes that are welfare-improving in the aggregate are easy to implement in some cities but difficult in others and what types of transfer arrangements can make change feasible.
Each paper should be a case study of a particular policy reform or set of policies, that may or may not have been successful. Papers should address the political economy of policy-making and implementation. A paper can be entirely qualitative or both qualitative and quantitative. The primary motivation for such a special issue is that the institutional knowledge that is required to understand policy successes and failures is often lacking, making it difficult to interpret estimates of impact already in the literature.
Submission Guidelines: Papers should be submitted by 31 July 2025 at the latest. Early submissions are encouraged and will be processed immediately. Papers will undergo the normal refereeing process. The quality of the paper and the extent to which it fits the focus of the special issue are the criteria for acceptance.
Submissions should be made online at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ede. During the first step of the submission process, in the “Special Issue” field, authors should select “Clean Air”. Authors should also indicate in their cover letter that the manuscript is for the “The Political Economy of Clean Air Transitions” Special Issue.
Instructions for contributors can be found here.
For further information, authors should contact the Guest Editors at the emails below.
| Jorge Alexander Bonilla | Universidad de Los Andes | |
| Rohini Somanathan | Delhi School of Economics |
About the Guest Editors
Jorge Bonilla is Associate Professor of Economics at Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia. He is also the Director of the Research Group on Environmental, Resource, and Applied Economic Studies (REES- EfD Colombia). His research focuses on the performance of environmental policy instruments with particular application to externalities, such as air pollution and climate change. He empirically studies the effectiveness, costs and benefits of policy interventions designed to cut congestion and emissions, and analyzes how firms and drivers respond to different kinds of environmental regulations. His research aims to offer valuable insights to policymakers who seek to bring attention to the magnitude of the impact of human decisions on air pollution and global emissions.
Rohini Somanathan is Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics. Her research focuses on how social institutions interact with public policies to shape patterns of economic and social inequality. Within the broad area of development economics, she has worked on group identity and public goods, access to microfinance, child nutrition programs and environmental health. She is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the International Economic Association.