Blinded by the Light: Economic Analysis of Severe Light Pollution

This paper examines severe light pollution such as commonly found in large urban areas. Light pollution is the unintended negative consequences of poorly designed and injudiciously used artificial lighting. Light pollution generates significant costs including wasted energy and damage to human health, wildlife, recreation, and the beauty of the night sky. Typically, light-pollution models emphasize population density and ignore economic factors. Economic analysis of the issue has been singularly limited. Previous economic research has focused on widespread, but very low levels of light pollution. This paper makes a unique contribution by analyzing economic factors of severe light pollution. The paper utilizes economic data from the World Bank and unique remote sensing data for 184 countries to quantify the economic causes of severe light pollution. Fractional logit models confirm the importance of population and economic factors alike.