| 1. |
- Ahrsjö, Ulrika, 1989-
(författare)
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Essays on Economic Disadvantage : Criminal Justice, Gender and Social Mobility
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Youth Crime, Community Service and Labor Market OutcomesCan lifetime trajectories of youth offenders be improved through criminal justice policy? I evaluate the effects of a youth justice reform in Sweden that sharply increased the share of juveniles assigned to court-ordered community service --- i.e. unpaid, low-skilled work. On average, the reform did not affect post-conviction recidivism or labor market outcomes, but these average effects mask considerable heterogeneity depending on the most likely alternative sanction. In particular, post-reform recidivism and incarceration rates are lower for individuals for whom community service replaces fines. Applying a machine learning method for causal inference, I then evaluate the net financial effect of the policy conditional on observable characteristics and analyze how the program could be targeted for improved efficiency. The results suggest that community service can benefit youth offenders, but that it is not suitable as a universal program.Intergenerational Mobility Trends and the Changing Role of Female LaborWe present new evidence on the existence and drivers of trends in intergenerational income mobility using administrative income data from Scandinavia along with survey data from the United States. Harmonizing the data from Sweden, Denmark and Norway, we first find that intergenerational rank associations in income have increased uniformly across Scandinavia for cohorts of children born between 1951 and 1979. Splitting the trends by gender, we find that father-son mobility has been stable in all three countries, while correlations involving females display substantial trends. Similar patterns are confirmed in the US data, albeit with slightly different timing. Utilizing information about individual occupation, education and income in the Scandinavian data, we find that intergenerational mobility in latent economic status has remained relatively constant for all gender combinations. This is found to be driven by increased female labor market participation at the intensive as well as the extensive margin. The observed decline in intergenerational mobility in Scandinavia is thus consistent with a socially desirable development where female skills are increasingly valued in the labor market.Wage Inequality, Selection and the Evolution of the Gender Earnings Gap in Sweden We estimate the change in the gender wage gap between 1968 and 2019 in Sweden accounting for (1) changes in the intensive margin of labor supply; (2) changes in the overall wage inequality; (3) changes in selection into the labor market using parametric and non-parametric selection corrections. Our results show that between 1968 and 1991, about half of the changes in the gender wage gap can be attributed to changes in the overall wage distribution. Conversely, changes in the wage distribution from 1991 to 2019 mask a larger closure of the gender wage gap. Our corrections for selection into the labor force suggest that uncorrected estimates miss about half of the around 20 percentage points decrease in the gender wage gap over the 1968-2019 period.Identity in Court Decision-MakingWe explore the role of identity along multiple dimensions in high-stakes decision-making. Our data set contains information about gender, ethnic background, age and socioeconomic indicators for randomly assigned jurors and defendants in a Swedish district court. Our results show that defendants are significantly less likely to get a prison sentence if they and the jurors belong to the same identity-forming group. For example, a defendant is 15 percent less likely to get a prison sentence if he or she has the same level of education as all three jurors compared to if none of them have the same educational attainments.
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| 2. |
- Almén, Daniel, 1984-
(författare)
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Societal Impacts of Modern Conscription : Human Capital, Social Capital and Criminal Behaviour
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Opportunity Costs and Conscription: An Unintended Progressive Tax?Throughout history to present days, policymakers, social commentators and others have oftentimes viewed conscription as a natural extension of secondary education, and an important institution for vocational training. This paper uses Swedish administrative data and exploits a reform in 2004, implying a sudden downsizing of the military, to identify the causal effects of peacetime conscription on later labour market outcomes and education. I find that unemployment increased in the short run, and lasted up to four years after service. There are no significant overall effects on income or educational attainment. However, these average effects hide a large heterogeneity. High ability conscripts fall behind their counterparts who did not start military service, both in terms of income and employment. Furthermore, the results suggest that the effect is attributed to high ability conscripts assigned as privates. In contrast, no such evidence is found for conscripts assigned to officer training, despite the fact that all of them have a high ability, and a longer time in service. Plausibly, high ability conscripts have high opportunity costs of doing military service, and the civilian benefits from training as privates are too small to counteract these costs. The results highlight the importance of precise matching of aptitude to type of training or education, an insight that might be generalized to other contexts beyond conscription.Citizenship, Social Capital and the Role of Conscription: Evidence from SwedenMany scholars have argued that conscription has played an important role as a nation-builder throughout history. Today, advocates of conscription often put forward its potential to induce citizenship and civic engagement. This paper addresses this claim by studying the causal effects of military service on civic engagement by using Swedish administrative data on election participation, blood donation, and the payment of a mandatory, but highly evaded, fee to the public broadcasting service. I study two qualitatively very different conscription systems from two different eras in Sweden, yielding a high external validity. To study the effects of universal conscription (almost all healthy and fit men serve) during the early 1990s, I use an empirical strategy similar in spirit to work using randomly assigned judges as an instrument. To identify the effects of selective conscription (a small fraction of motivated and positively selected men serve), I exploit a reform in 2004, implying a sudden downsizing of the military. In contrast to the previous correlational literature, the results show small and insignificant point estimates for all outcomes in both populations studied. Hence, I find no evidence of any causal effects of military service on civic engagement in either a selective-, or in a universal conscription systemThe Effect of Military Conscription on the Formation of Criminal Behaviour: Evidence from a Natural ExperimentConscription has been suggested to be a policy-tool to break young men's anti-social life-trajectories. This paper uses Swedish administrative data and exploits a reform in 2004, implying a sudden downsizing of the military, to identify the causal effects of peacetime conscription on contemporaneous, short- and medium-term crime. I find no evidence of any effects on criminal activity while in service. However, the post-service results show crime increasing effects of military service at the intensive margin (number of convictions), but not at the extensive margin (probability of conviction). The overall crime increasing effect seems to be primarily driven by thefts. This study finds no support for increased overall violent behaviour or that the military context per se induces anti-social behaviour. Rather, some suggestive evidence for worsened labour market opportunities for some groups is documented as a plausible mechanism behind the crime increasing results.
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| 3. |
- Blomqvist, Niklas, 1987-
(författare)
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Essays on Labor Economics : The Role of Government in Labor Supply Choices
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- "Right to Work Full-time" Policies and Involuntary Part-time EmploymentThis paper investigates the effect of right to full-time policies implemented to decrease involuntary part-time work for public care workers employed by Swedish municipalities. Taking advantage of a staggered decision process, these policies are evaluated using a difference-in-differences approach. Results show that involuntary part-time employment is real and significant, with 10% of part-time employed workers choosing full-time when given the opportunity. The effect mainly comes from a decrease in contracts of <75% of full-time and an increase in contracts of 80% of full-time and above. Further results from the full-time policies show that being more flexible in the choice of hours worked is popular among workers, indicated by an increase in tenure and reduced turnover in municipalities that offer more flexibility in the choice of hours worked.Hours Constraints and Tax Elasticity Estimates - Evidence from Swedish Public Care WorkersThere is a concern that tax elasticity estimates may be downward biased in the presence of optimization frictions for workers. So far, there is limited evidence on the nature of these optimization frictions. This paper provides new insight into one part of the optimization frictions black box, namely hours constraints. Using unique and newly collected data, I exploit a staggered implementation of a policy that gave some public care workers the opportunity to choose their preferred hours of work. Taking advantage of this policy, I estimate differences in tax elasticities between constrained and unconstrained public care workers by comparing bunching at a large tax kink in the Swedish tax system. The empirical evidence points to the conclusion that hours constraints do not affect tax elasticity estimates.Restricting Residence Permits - Short-Run Evidence from a Swedish ReformIn June 2016, the Swedish parliament decided to restrict the granting of permanent residence permits for asylum seekers in Sweden. The new status quo for a refugee is a temporary rather than a permanent residence permit. In a first evaluation of this reform we use a Regression discontinuity analysis in which we follow refugees, aged 25-65, over their first years after arrival. Our main results show that a temporary residence permit increases the probability of working and enrolling in regular education.Mom and Dad Got Jobs: Natural Resources, Economic Activity, and Infant HealthThe impact of local economic shocks, such as the discovery and exploitation of natural resources, on labor markets and health is not well understood. Both positive and negative effects have been documented in the literature. In this paper, we show that the phase before active resource extraction begins directly affects the local economy. This implies that previous estimates – typically based on designs exploiting differences before and after the active phase of extraction begins - may have understated the actual effect of natural resource extraction on outcomes of interest. Using rich data from Sweden combined with differences in the timing and location of mineral exploitation permits, we find a positive impact on female and male employment and earnings and a negative effect on housing prices. Children’s health outcomes are also negatively affected, an effect likely driven by the increase in local economic activity rather than extraction-related externalities.
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| 4. |
- Fukushima, Nanna, 1978-
(författare)
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Essays on the Economics of the 1956 Clean Air Act
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three essays in environmental and health economics.The UK Clean Air Act, Black Smoke, and Infant MortalityThis paper estimates the effects of the 1956 UK Clean Air Act on infant mortality. Using novel data, I exploit the seasonality in demand for coal to analyze the effects of a staggered expansion of a ban on local smoke emission. The findings show that the policy eliminated the seasonal difference in air quality as well as infant mortality. According to my instrumental variables estimates, the reduction in air pollution between 1957 and 1973 can account for 70 % of the observed decline in infant mortality during the same period. The results are relevant to explain the fast decline in post-war infant mortality in developed countries and understand the effect of pollution on infant mortality in many developing countries.A Fine Solution to Air Pollution?This paper studies the effect of an exogenous change in air pollution regulation enforcement on regulation compliance. I exploit the spatial and temporal variation in the roll-out of zonal bans on smoke from coal in densely populated areas in England between 1963 – 1973 to study the effect of regulation on air pollution when the monetary punishment if convicted is doubled. I find that the increase in fine size increased the effect of the regulation on air pollution by 37 percent. However, evidence suggests that the poorest households disproportionally carried the cost of the marginal improvement in air quality from an increase in fine. The findings highlight the distributional concerns associated when designing an effective environmental regulation.Environmental Regulation and Firm PerformanceThis paper investigates the effect of environmental regulation in England in the 1960 – 70s on changes in employment and the entry and exit of manufacturing plants. It matches 1 km2 grid resolution plant data for multiple years with novel data on the location and timing of a roll-out of a ban on bituminous coal, the leading source of energy and heating in industry at the time. I show that the regulation negatively affected employment in low-productive plants but increased the probability of survival, employment, and the entry of high-productive plants. I present a simple theoretical model with heterogeneous firms and find empirical evidence in line with model predictions.
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| 5. |
- Jackson, David, 1973-
(författare)
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Enforcing Social Norms : How Economics Shapes Reputation and Social Punishment
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates how the economic environment shapes levels of trust and cooperation and the nature of norm enforcement. The idea that many social norms can be understood as an effective response to challenges presented by the economic and ecological environment has significant empirical support. However, few theoretical models study this relationship in detail.Many existing models of reputation are driven by imperfect information. However, information frictions are often assumed rather than derived. The first paper 'Reputation on Networks', uses a network model to investigate how the structure of a communication network affects the value of reputation. The results suggest an inverted U-shaped relationship between trust and the level of clustering in a network. High levels of clustering limit the number of potential partners agents have access to and lower the value of reputation. While, when networks become too open trust is undermined because agents become information gatekeepers for their reputation.The second paper 'Reputation, Punishment and the Informal Enforcement of Norms', looks at informal enforcement when reputation and costly social punishment are considered within the same framework. The results suggest a complementary relationship between these two forms of social punishment. Because reputation leverages a third-party punishment threat over many future interactions, the mechanism provides a novel and compelling explanation of costly third-party and altruistic punishment. Unlike other models, the theory provides predictions about the overall intensity of social punishment and how this varies with the combined package of behaviours a community regulates using social norms.The third paper 'Ingroup Norms and Relation Specific Punishment', considers when agents can maintain or renegotiate trust with a defector, either bilaterally or within an identifiable group. These agents will adopt an ingroup norm such that members who defect outside the group are still trusted within it. The results detail when agents are individually motivated to punish their friends and ingroup members to support reputation-based trust beyond the group. The analysis provides a novel explanation for ingroup bias and details the conditions for inter-group trust and where relation-specific or ingroup norms will be adopted over universal ones.
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| 6. |
- Khoban, Roza, 1989-
(författare)
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Globalization and Development : The Impact of International Trade on Political and Social Institutions
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Impact of Trade Liberalization in the Presence of Political DistortionsPolitical distortions are prevalent in many developing countries and can imply substantial productivity losses. Theory is ambiguous as to whether greater openness to trade amplifies or reduces the effects of such distortions. This paper shows that trade liberalization in India decreased the value of firms' political connections, suggesting a reduction in political distortions. First, using variation in firm connections stemming from political turnover, we identify that political connections increased firm performance by 10-20%. Second, we evaluate how the value of political connections changed after India's externally imposed tariff reductions, using a triple-difference and difference-in-discontinuities design. We find that political connections became substantially less valuable when tariffs on input goods were reduced. Our findings imply that access to international markets reduces firms' dependence on political connections to source input goods, thus reducing the distortionary effect of such connections. The results suggest a new margin for gains from trade in the presence of political distortions through a direct effect of trade liberalization on the prevalence of such distortions.Importing Gender EqualityGender equality remains low in many developing countries and can partly be explained by social norms. In this paper, I investigate whether trade and, in particular import, can shift gender norms. Specifically, I study whether trading and interacting with firms in countries with higher gender equality can affect firms' gender composition in India. I construct a global industry-level index of gender equality and exploit India's trade liberalization in the 1990s to study the trade-induced increased exposure to other countries' gender norms. I find that tariff reductions increased the probability of having a female worker only for firms in industries with higher exposure to gender equality. The effect is stronger for firms in industries with higher exposure to gender equality that, to a greater extent, use relationship-specific input goods. Taken together, the results suggest that trade-induced increased exposure to other countries' gender equality can influence firms' gender composition among workers.Trade-Induced Protests: Evidence from the Brazilian Trade LiberalizationThis paper examines whether trade liberalization can induce shifts in citizens' willingness to mobilize and participate in protests. Specifically, I study the regional effects of Brazil's trade liberalization in the 1990s. I show that regions that were exposed to larger tariff reductions experienced a relative increase in protests. Protests increased in harder-hit regions almost immediately after the liberalization, and the effect is amplified over time. By studying potential mechanisms, I show that the surge in protests follows the pattern of the trade-induced increase in income inequality and reductions in government spending.
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| 7. |
- Linderoth, Anna, 1983-
(författare)
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Essays on Men's Preferences and Gender Inequality in the Labor Market
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Reference Points for Men’s Parental Leave-Taking Behavior:Evidence from Swedish ReformsThis paper tests the hypothesis of reference dependence in men's parental leave takeup. Using register data, I leverage two reforms introducing earmarked provision for fathers. A key empirical challenge in separating reference point behavior arises from the fact that the earmark provisions also altered men's financial incentives to bunch around the value of the provision. To address this issue, I net out behavioral responses to the financial incentives by calculating and controlling for their size and exploiting the fact that financial incentives remained unchanged for sub-groups of households. The findings reveal that introducing reference points through earmark provisions led to a substantial increase in the average number of parental leave days taken per man (the intensive margin) and an elevated likelihood that men would take any parental leave (the extensive margin). In comparison, responses to the financial incentives are modest. The effect of reference dependence was most pronounced immediately after the reforms but gradually declined as men's parental leave takeup increasingly exceeded the earmarked provision.Too Many Female Colleagues For Comfort? Men’s Tipping Behavior and Gender Segregation Across Workplaces.Women and men tend to work in different workplaces, and this gender segregation is an important contributor to the gender wage gap. This paper studies a new explanation for workplace gender segregation, namely that men leave the workplace when the share of women reaches a certain point. I draw on past research on occupation-level tipping to detect potential composition levels—tipping points—where the share of men in a workplace starts dropping discontinuously over time. This analysis uses Swedish register data for all small- and medium-size workplaces from 1986 to 2009 and is carried out separately by men's level of education (high or low). I find strong non-linear patterns for high-skilled men but not for low-skilled ones. The distribution of candidate tipping points for high-skilled workplaces is centered around 25% to 35% female. Using enlistment data, I find a significant decrease in men's cognitive and non-cognitive skills at tipping point. I draw on my empirical findings to show how compositional preferences can be built into a simple model of self-selection. The model explains the observed negative selection of men after a workplace has exceeded a critical tipping point. The result of this paper emphasizes the potential importance of the preferences of the dominant group.Occupational Gender Segregation and Men's Tipping Behavior: the Swedish Case.The division of occupations along gender lines seems to be a common and persistent feature between countries, despite differences in social norms and institutional settings across time. The aim of this paper is to investigate one possible explanation, namely tipping behaviour in occupations. It studies the non-linear dynamics of occupation segregation, applying an approach similar to regression discontinuity design. This paper studies tipping behaviour in the Swedish labour market from 1960 to 1990 and compares it to the results for the U.S. using an analogous methodology. The graphical approach exhibits a highly non-linear relationship in female share. I find candidate tipping points that range between 9 to 32 percent in female share. The results indicate discontinuous changes in net male employment growth at candidate tipping point.
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| 8. |
- Lindgren, Erik, 1981-
(författare)
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One coin - One vote : the rural political power shift that pushed Sweden towards industrialization
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Causal Effect of Political Power on the Provision of Public Education: Evidence from a Weighted Voting SystemWe estimate how political power affects the provision of public education in local governments, using data from a nondemocratic society where voters received votes in proportion to their taxable income. This was the system used in Swedish local governments during the period 1862–1909. We use two different identification strategies, a threshold regression analysis and a generalized event-study design, both of which exploit nonlinearities or discontinuities in the effect of political power between two opposing local elites: agricultural landowners and emerging industrialists. The results suggest that school spending is approximately 90–120% higher if the non-agrarian interest controls all of the votes compared to when landowners have a majority.The Causal Effect of Transport Infrastructure: Evidence from a New Historical DatabaseWe analyze the effect of railroad investments on economic growth and find large effects of having access to railways. For real non-agricultural income, the cumulative treatment effect is approximately 130% after 30 years. We also show that the effect is likely to reflect growth rather than a reorganization of existing economic activity since no spillover effects between treated and untreated regions are found. Our results are consistent with the big push hypothesis that argues that simultaneous and coordinated investment can generate economic growth if there are strong aggregate demand externalities. We corroborate this mechanism by using plant-level data and find that investments in local railways significantly increase local industrial production and employment.The Political Economics of Growth, Labor Control and Coercion: Evidence from a Suffrage Reform Here we analyze the breadth of Sweden’s industrial, economic and social development from the 1860s to the 1910s. By using a novel constructed historical dataset of approximately 2,400 Swedish local governments we find that the change in suffrage affected several outcomes at the local level. These outcomes include factor price manipulation in the form of entry barriers such as investments in local public education and transportation; technology adoption and labor productivity in agriculture and industry; changes in the real wage structure, composition of employment, and the structure of production; organized labor and labor coercion; demographic transition; and persistence in dysfunctional local political institutions. Our results support the idea that political institutions are a key determinant of long-term development and growth. Precipitation and Infant Mortality: Evidence from Sweden 1881–1950I analyze the dynamic effects of precipitation on infant mortality, using a panel dataset containing monthly mortality data from approximately 2,150 Swedish parishes and monthly precipitation levels collected at a number of weather stations around the country. Given that I use data from 1881 to 1950, the size of this novel panel dataset is considerable. Parishes have been matched to the closest weather station for every given month. Given that precipitation, is neither binary nor constant, a binned event-study design is used to estimate the dynamic effects with respect to the precipitation intensity. The results show that increased precipitation decreases infant mortality for both male and female infants. The dynamic effect after 4 months is about 8 percent.
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| 9. |
- Lorentzon, Louise, 1987-
(författare)
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Empirical Essays on Public Policies : Social Insurances, Safety Nets, and Health Care
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Screening Efficiency in Sickness Insurance: Evidence from a Spell Limit ReformI estimate the effects of the removal of a limit on sick leave spells in the Swedish Sickness Insurance program, on labor market outcomes and sick leave. The removal of the spell limit led to longer sick leave spells. I also find that the removal led to a reduction in the share of people who are neither working, nor receiving sickness benefits. A conceptual framework is used to interpret the results in terms of benefits screening efficiency, which is found to increase through the removal of the spell limit. The identification is based on a regression discontinuity design, using the timing of sick leave start dates and the abolition of the spell limit.Long-Term Effects of Cash Transfers: Evidence from a Swedish ReformDo short-term cash transfers to the poor deliver long-term benefits? This paper studies a unique program introduced in Sweden in the 1930s. The program made large transfers – on average approximately 30 percent of total income in the collected sample – to widows with children. Income and family-size thresholds, combined with child age cutoffs, generate plausibly exogenous variation in program exposure. By digitizing and linking historical records to later administrative datasets, I study the long-term effects of this program. Focusing on life expectancy, I find no significant long-term effects; however, the estimates are imprecisely measured due to the limited sample size.Inertia of Dominated Pension Investments: Evidence from an Information InterventionIn this paper we empirically investigate potential causes of imperfect competition in the fund market, as characterized by high price dispersion among comparable funds. We discriminate between three main hypotheses on the demand side: a lack of awareness of price dispersion, search costs, and financial illiteracy. A large-scale field experiment is conducted in the Swedish Premium Pension system. Information letters are sent to pension savers in two index funds, where there exists a cheaper fund with the same index strategy. We show that an information intervention that increases awareness of a cheaper, dominating fund, and reduces search costs to find such an alternative, can significantly improve households’ real investment allocations. Nonetheless, a vast majority of savers who are sent information about the name of the dominating fund do not switch funds. Thus, the high degree of inertia in pension investments remains even when search friction for identifying dominating alternatives are eliminated.Midwives and Maternal Mortality: Evidence from a Midwifery Policy Experiment in 19th Century SwedenThis paper estimates the effect of a historical midwifery policy experiment on maternal mortality, infant mortality, and stillbirth during the period from 1830 to 1894 in Sweden. Exploiting sharp changes or “discontinuities” across time and place in the availability of trained and licensed midwives as an exogenous source of variation, we find that a doubling of trained midwives leads to a 20-40 percent reduction in maternal mortality and to a 20 percent increase in the uptake of midwife-assisted homebirths. The results thus suggest that a 1 percent increase in the share of midwife-assisted homebirths decreases maternal mortality by as much as 2 percent, which is a remarkable finding given that midwife training was only 6-12 months at that time. The results of this study contribute to the current debate about the most effective strategy to reduce the unacceptably high rate of maternal mortality in many developing countries, especially in low-resource settings.
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| 10. |
- Nordfors, Nicklas, 1991-
(författare)
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Essays on Development and the Environment
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Droughts and city growth Some researchers and policymakers posit that climate change should increase city growth and urbanization as rising temperatures make rural livelihoods precarious, while others argue that climate change might trap rural households who cannot afford to migrate because of increasing poverty. Existing empirical evidence on the link between climate and urbanization is inconclusive. This chapter exploits novel data mapping city footprint growth for 7,000 cities in 108 low- to middle-income countries across 23 years to provide new evidence on the relationship between drought and urbanization. Cities experience large and persistent declines in built-up area growth rates after major drought events in cities' hinterlands: after 11 years, cities are 0.7 percent smaller compared to a drought-free counterfactual. I show that fully accounting for dynamic effects is essential to correctly understand the relationship between drought and city growth. Consistent with models that envision a drought-migration poverty trap, the negative effects on urbanization are more pronounced for the poorest, and most agricultural countries.Rapid population growth and city shape Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa are growing rapidly. The urban population has grown ten-fold in the last 50 years, and is projected to keep increasing. What are the consequences of this rapid population growth for city form? In Africa, urban planning has often failed or lagged behind, leaving cities with inadequate infrastructure. Policymakers and researchers have suggested that the rapidity of the rise in urban population is partly to blame, but quantitative and systematic evidence remains scant. I utilize new high resolution data to examine the relationship between population growth and city form. I find that areas in cities which are built up during periods of faster population growth tend to be less densely built, have lower building heights, and are more likely to be exposed to flooding. In addition, these areas have smaller buildings, and are more informal. Together, my findings suggest that urban population growth helps shape the built environment in Sub-Saharan African cities, inducing lower built-up density and more informality.Trade and pollution: Evidence from India What happens to pollution when developing countries open their borders to trade? Trade might increase production and thus pollution (the scale effect); shift production towards more or less clean industries (the composition effect); or bring with it new technologies or income growth that increases demand for cleaner production (the technique effect). Empirical evidence on the environmental effects of openness to trade in developing countries remains limited. We study the effects of the 1991 trade liberalization reform on water pollution in rivers in India. At the median reduction in district-level tariff exposure, water pollution subsequently rose by 0.12 standard deviations.
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