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Litzow, Erin Lenz

University of British Columbia

This dissertation presents three essays in the fields of environmental, energy, and development economics. Chapters 2 and 3 consider the effects of environmental change and associated shocks on human capital and economic outcomes. Chapter 4 documents the failure of a policy designed to address environmental degradation and its costs. Chapter 2 identifies the impact of lead (Pb) pollution on learning outcomes in Mexico. The pollution is the result of a change in the United States' environmental regulation, which caused a pollution intensive industry to shift operations to Mexico. We use a spatial difference-in-difference design to show that test scores decrease by 0.05-0.09 standard deviations in response. Effects are stronger in communities that were worse off even before the pollution increase. These results underline the importance of considering unintended consequences and cross-border spillovers when regulating toxic pollutants and highlight the need for more research on the costs of lead pollution exposure in low and middle-income countries, where most exposure occurs today. Chapter 3 considers the effects of crises, like those that can arise from global environmental change. We study how garment-making-firm owners in a Ghanaian district capital responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. All firms experienced losses during the height of lockdown policies, but female-owned firms were more likely to close. Female-owned firms that closed were already on the margin of viability, and owners of these firms lost income. Male firm owners compensated for lost income via other economic opportunities. These results show how economic shocks, which are only expected to increase as climate change accelerates, can exacerbate pre-existing gender inequalities. Chapter 4 evaluates a policy aimed at slowing environmental change and mitigating its costs. It focuses on a biogas digester promotion program, targeted at energy poverty in Senegal. Using survey data collected from participating households, this chapter documents the failure of the program to deliver clean energy due to high digester failure rates. Only 15-percent of the digesters installed in the sampled households were operating. Not surprisingly, this evaluation does not find impacts on targeted outcomes like energy use, health, or economic outcomes.

Text

2024-07-22

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88672

Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/