Essays in Development Economics

This dissertation studies how climate change, fertility shocks, and structural economic forces shape economic development. The first chapter examines how unexpected fertility changes affect children’s human capital formation, using the 2015–2016 Zika epidemic in Brazil as a natural experiment. The second chapter analyzes the long-run economic consequences of drying lakes, focusing on the case of Lake Chad and showing that its shrinkage has had long-lasting impacts on local growth. The third chapter documents global patterns in urban economic structure using census data for thousands of cities, highlighting distinct pathways of production- and consumption-driven urbanization. The final chapter discusses cross-disciplinary evidence and methodologies on the impact of heat on labor productivity.

Author

• Haslop, Federico

Language

• en

Date created

• 2026

Type of Work

• Dissertation

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Economics

Degree

• Ph.D.

Advisor

• Jedwab, Remi

Committee Member(s)

• Carrillo, Paul
• Smith, Stephen C

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/js956g982