Diffusion of Soil Pollution in an Agricultural Economy: The Emergence of Regions, Frontiers and Spatial Patterns

The Status of the World's Soil Resources Report identi_ed in 2015 soil pollution as a major threat to all services provided by soils (FAO and ITPS, 2015). This paper develops spatial growth model for an agricultural economy where di_uses soil. In order produce, needs fertile soil, which is naturally bounded amount available land. Although production entails pollution, locations can protect their investing abatement. Once location reaches its maximum fer- tile land, split into region polluted region, separated dynamic frontier follows evolution pollution. After providing optimal trajectories consumption we prove that heterogenous steady states emerge even homogeneous economies, stag- nate forever environmental poverty trap. Our results are numerically illustrated, including examples economy's resilience shocks.