Essays in Environmental Economics
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Date
2020-02-27
Authors
Wilson, Kyle
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on two aspects of Environmental Economics that are critical in cost-benefit analysis. Chapters II and III focus on estimating potential costs of drought that may be exacerbated by climate change, and Chapter IV focuses on examining the hedonic property value model that is commonly used to estimate potential benefits of environmental regulation. In Chapter II I estimate the impact of drought on crime in South Africa. Using a police-station by year panel, I exploit variation in the timing of droughts and water management policies to explain changes in crime. I find that violent crimes increase by 10%, police-detected crimes fall by
20%, and that there is no discernible impact on sex crimes or property crimes. These findings suggest that in the future, especially as severe droughts become more prevalent due to climate change, crime prevention may be an important component of climate policy. In Chapter III I examine how exposure to drought affects migration in the United States using a dataset of bilateral migration flows from 2000-2013. I find that moderate and severe drought do not significantly influence migration, but that exceptional drought and multi-year severe droughts reduce out-migration from afflicted counties. I further find that this result is strongest in low-income and high-poverty counties. These results suggest that adaptation to climate change through migration may be limited for disadvantaged groups in the United States. In Chapter IV I examine how the presence of a bubble in the housing markets affects estimates in a hedonic propery value model. The results indicate that the bubble does cause bias in the naive estimates, and that the extent of the bias increases with the size of the bubble.