Essays on Environmental and Health Economics
Open AccessThis dissertation is made up of three essays that explore the health and economic effects of a policy that improves the environment, as well as of another that neglects it. The first essay studies the health improvement resulting from diesel desulfurization, taking evidence from a 2005 policy implemented in Quito, Ecuador. Despite voluminous literature on the health-effects of improved air-quality, and a known link between diesel sulfur levels and vehicle emissions, little is known regarding the direct health benefits of diesel desulfurization. As many countries around the world continue to use high-sulfur diesel, a better understanding of these benefits is valuable. Difference-in-differences regression results indicate a 14 percent reduction in acute respiratory illness (ARI) hospital visits in Quito for children, and a 11.5 percent decrease for elderly citizens, after the policy was fully implemented. Cardiovascular hospital visits for the elderly also decreased, but the results are less robust. ARI for children, and chronic respiratory problems and cardiovascular sicknesses for the elderly, became less severe in terms of the average length of each hospital visit. Finally, a cost-benefit exercise suggests that the savings in terms of the productive value from averted health losses outweighed the costs of cleaner diesel. The second and third essays address the effects of international aid transitions – broadly defined as a change or termination of the terms of engagement between the donor and the recipient country. The transition analyzed is a mid-1960s shift in USAID policy from grant to loan funding for the Global Malaria Eradication Program. Several Latin American countries were transitioned, including Ecuador. The second essay studies the link between the transition and malaria incidence and argues that the policy change was untimely in Ecuador because it did not consider two El Niño events which are associated with increased malaria transmission. In Ecuador, a malaria epidemic from 1967 to 1970 followed, and regression analysis reveals that the drop in government funding at the same time as the transition increased malaria cases by about 3.19 cases per every 1000 citizens. Furthermore, El Niño rainfalls may have accounted for at least half of this increase in malaria. The final essay takes this analysis further by studying the in-utero and perinatal effects of the malaria epidemics on future earnings. Historic rainfall data at the canton level together with canton elevation-above-sea-level is matched to 2010 earnings by a difference-in-differences-in-differences identification strategy. Regression results are suggestive, but not conclusive, of a negative in-utero effect driven entirely by male workers. Unfortunately, identification challenges cannot be overcome to validate this finding.
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