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The effect of air pollution on US aggregate production

Author

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  • Avila Uribe, Antonio
Abstract
A growing literature has documented sizeable negative effects of air pollution on individuals’ health, labour market performance and human capital accumulation, all determinants of a country’s overall economic activity. So what are the effects of air pollution on aggregate economic production? To answer this, I study the effects of PM2.5 on county-level GDP, GDP per capita, and GDP per employee in the United States (2006-2018) by exploiting a detailed dataset of yearly air pollution exposure by county and a set of instrumental variables. In my main specification, I use exogenous year-to-year variation in wildfire-induced PM2.5 exposure from air trajectories simulations. Contrary to recent studies in China and the EU, which find large negative effects in all regions, my results show no effect for the US. However, these headline results mask spatial and temporal heterogeneity. Economically relevant negative effects appear to be present in rural areas during working days or when base levels or air pollution are above the median, and in the trade sector and educational services. The results are robust to various alternative specifications and alternative instruments previously used in the literature, such as thermal inversions or smoke plume polygons.

Suggested Citation

  • Avila Uribe, Antonio, 2023. "The effect of air pollution on US aggregate production," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118481, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:118481
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/118481/
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Cécile Couharde & Rémi Generoso, 2024. "Assessing the Impact of National Air Quality Standards on Agricultural Land Values: Insights from Corn and Soybean Regions," Working Papers hal-04503777, HAL.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    air pollution; GDP; productivity; US; wildfires;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • O51 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - U.S.; Canada

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