Three Papers In Applied Microeconomics PDF Download

This dissertation addresses issues in environmental and public economics. The first part investigates the impact of exposure to toxic chemicals released by manufacturing firms on health and productivity outcomes. It focuses on accurately quantifying the causal impact of these releases, and compares the potential benefits of reductions in exposure to the benefits of other policy interventions. The second part of this dissertation explores three open questions in the literature on social demand for income redistribution in the United States.The first chapter examines the effect of exposure to airborne toxic chemicals on students' academic achievement using annual variations in standardized test scores linked to variations in within-school-cohort exposure to airborne releases of toxic chemicals. I find that airborne releases of toxins suspected or known to impact growth and development have a detrimental impact on education outcomes at schools located within one mile of the release site. For students who attend one of the 638 public elementary schools in the state of Texas located within a mile of a toxic-chemical releasing facility, declines in average releases of developmental toxins since 1989 have increased test scores by 0.7% of a standard deviation. This effect is about 6% as large as the improvement expected if the average quality of every teacher in these schools was increased by one standard deviation, or 4% of the test score improvement expected if every class size was reduced by 8 students.The second chapter employs a novel estimation strategy to quantify the impact of waterborne releases of industrial toxins on infant health outcomes using variation in the source of raw drinking water (groundwater vs. surface water) to control for the effects of economic activity and other omitted variables common to much of the research in this field. I find that within-county toxic releases into surface water are associated with higher infant mortality and lower birthweights in areas which rely on surface water as a source of tap water relative to those which rely on groundwater as a source of tap water. A one within-county standard deviation increase in surface releases is associated with a 3.5% increase in infant mortality and a 2.6% increase in the incidence of very low birthweight births. These results are about half as large as the improvements in birthweight associated with the well-known Food Stamp or WIC programs on county-average birthweights, and are similar to a one standard deviation increase in airborne releases of developmental toxins. The final chapter addresses a different public policy topic - taxation and redistribution. My coauthor and I explore the public's expressed attitudes towards redistribution through taxation and address three open questions related to income redistribution preferences. First, we use data from a nationally representative survey on taxation and fairness to explore the relative demand for redistribution from the wealthy to the middle class and to the poor. We find that, while Americans have interest in redistribution to both groups, this demand is driven by dramatically different factors. Second, we examine how stated demand for redistribution is influenced by issues of question framing. Finally, we conduct an experiment to disentangle pure preferences for income redistribution from beliefs about the disincentive effects of higher tax rates. These findings contribute to understanding current political tensions over income inequality.