This pa­per es­ti­mates the short-run and long-run im­pacts of early child­hood lead ex­po­sure from drink­ing wa­ter on ed­u­ca­tional out­comes, the spa­tial and de­mo­graphic dis­tri­b­u­tion of these im­pacts, and the wel­fare im­pacts of lead abate­ment poli­cies. I merge data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on lead vi­o­la­tions un­der the Safe Drinking Water Act with data on in­di­vid­ual stan­dard test scores, ed­u­ca­tional at­tain­ment, and wages from re­stric­tive-use Texas data. I also match lead con­cen­tra­tion in drink­ing wa­ter with Blood Lead Levels (BLLs) data, ed­u­ca­tion and la­bor-mar­ket out­comes for a sub­group of in­di­vid­u­als for whom we can iden­tify their drink­ing wa­ter provider in Texas to un­der­stand the dose-re­sponse im­pacts of lead in drink­ing wa­ter. I find that lead ex­po­sure at birth from drink­ing wa­ter has significant neg­a­tive im­pact on stu­dents’ 3rd grade stan­dard test scores. In the long run, it also significantly re­duce the high school grad­u­a­tion rate.

Prior work sug­gests that, un­like air pol­lu­tion reg­u­la­tion, the mar­ginal cost of am­bi­ent wa­ter pol­lu­tion reg­u­la­tion in the United States of­ten ex­ceeds its mar­ginal benefit. This pa­per pro­vides some in­tu­ition, the­ory and em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence sug­gest­ing that the typ­i­cal he­do­nic prop­erty model — a com­mon re­vealed-pref­er­ence ap­proach in the lit­er­a­ture valu­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal ameni­ties — may tend to un­der­state MWTP for the im­proved recre­ational op­por­tu­ni­ties that bet­ter wa­ter qual­ity affords to lo­cal home­own­ers. Using the case of nu­tri­ent pol­lu­tion in Tampa Bay, Florida, we es­ti­mate MWTP for wa­ter qual­ity im­prove­ments by com­bin­ing a recre­ation de­mand model with a he­do­nic hous­ing model, al­low­ing house­holds to op­ti­mize over re­gional aquatic recre­ation op­por­tu­ni­ties (influenced by pol­lu­tion in recre­ational wa­ters) as well as am­bi­ent wa­ter qual­ity very close to homes. Results in­di­cate that home­own­ers have significant MWTP for both im­prove­ments in lo­cal am­bi­ent wa­ter qual­ity and im­prove­ments in re­gional recre­ational wa­ters. Our recre­ational benefit es­ti­mates are much larger than those we es­ti­mate for lo­cal amenity val­ues, sug­gest­ing that prior he­do­nic stud­ies may un­der­es­ti­mate the value of wa­ter pol­lu­tion con­trol.

Suicide and Lithium in the Public Water Supply of 870 US Counties

Several stud­ies have re­ported that sui­cide rates are lower in ar­eas with higher con­cen­tra­tions of lithium in drink­ing wa­ter. Some au­thors have rec­om­mended adding lithium to the pub­lic wa­ter sup­ply. We es­ti­mate the as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween sui­cide and drink­ing-wa­ter lithium in the largest dataset yet used for this pur­pose. In 870 US coun­ties, we regress county sui­cide rates on lithium con­cen­tra­tions in ground­wa­ter and sur­face wa­ter. We con­trol for spa­tial cor­re­la­tion and county-level cor­re­lates of sui­cide rates, in­clud­ing eco­nomic con­di­tions and re­li­gious, racial, and eth­nic com­po­si­tion. With or with­out co­vari­ates, we find no significant as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween county sui­cide rates and the con­cen­tra­tion of lithium in the wa­ter sup­ply. Our re­sults do not sup­port a pol­icy of adding lithium to the wa­ter sup­ply.

This pa­per sur­veys the eco­nomic the­ory be­hind reg­u­la­tory and other so­lu­tions to the stark am­bi­ent wa­ter pol­lu­tion prob­lems that ex­ist in many de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, and what is known from the em­pir­i­cal eco­nom­ics lit­er­a­ture about the effec­tive­ness of these so­lu­tions. We also con­sider chal­lenges for wa­ter pol­lu­tion con­trol poli­cies that may be specific to de­vel­op­ing coun­try set­tings and sum­ma­rizes gaps in the em­pir­i­cal lit­er­a­ture on wa­ter pol­lu­tion pol­icy im­pacts in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

Do River Chiefs Reduce Surface Water Pollution in China?

In 2016, the cen­tral gov­ern­ment in China passed on new pol­icy ap­point­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment officials as river chiefs across the coun­try, mak­ing them re­spon­si­ble for wa­ter re­source man­age­ment. The river chief mech­a­nism as­signs each sec­tion of rivers and lakes in China with river chiefs by the end of 2018. Since the an­nounce­ment of this new pol­icy, an on­go­ing de­bate has be­gun on the pos­si­ble effec­tive­ness of river chiefs in re­duc­ing pol­lu­tion. In this pa­per, I con­tribute to the de­bate by em­pir­i­cally in­ves­ti­gat­ing the effect of the River Chief Mechanism on wa­ter qual­ity in China. I con­struct a data set com­bin­ing sur­face wa­ter qual­ity data from var­i­ous sources in China and col­lect data on the dates each province and city make ini­tial an­nounce­ments of its river chiefs. An event study analy­sis is per­formed to un­der­stand the im­pact of river chief as­sign­ment on wa­ter qual­ity.

Subway open­ing and air qual­ity in China

Using data on sub­way open­ings and daily air qual­ity in China from 2002-2017, we mea­sure the im­pact of sub­way open­ings on air qual­ity. Existing stud­ies have linked sub­way open­ings to air qual­ity im­prove­ments in both de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. But some stud­ies found het­ero­ge­neous im­pacts of sub­way open­ings in Chinese cities. This study adds to the lit­er­a­ture by fo­cus­ing on sub­way open­ings and ex­ten­sions to all Chinese cities from 2002-2017. Using traffic con­ges­tion data, we also test for the mech­a­nism that could ex­plain the im­pacts of sub­way open­ings on air qual­ity.