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on Resource Economics |
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Issue of 2024‒03‒18
two papers chosen by |
| By: | Aguilar-Gómez , Sandra (Universidad de los Andes); Cárdenas, Juan Camilo (Universidad de los Andes); Salas Díaz, Ricardo (Universidad de Massachusetts) |
| Abstract: | Driven by environmental justice activism and policy reforms, recent social science research conducted mostly in the US has documented the greater environmental degradation faced by marginalized communities. Yet, the ethnoracial categories used in these studies may not fully capture environmental inequality in the Global South. This study presents novel findings that quantify and decompose the link between skin tone and ambient air pollution exposure in Colombia, moving beyond conventional race and ethnicity variables. By matching household geolocations with satellite-based pollution measures, we find that skin tone —even more than predetermined ethnoracial categories— predicts both initial pollution levels and their changes over time. Darker-skinned individuals encounter more significant pollution increases, even after controlling for ethnoracial self-identification. These patterns hold among migrants and non-migrants, indicating that sorting and siting contribute to these disparities. Our results underline the importance of considering skin tone in environmental justice discussions, particularly in contexts where traditional race and ethnicity classifications fall short. |
| Keywords: | Environmental justice; air pollution; skin tone; Colombia |
| JEL: | I31 J15 Q53 Q56 R23 |
| Date: | 2024–02–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:021042&r=res |
| By: | Milena Almagro (University of Chicago); Felipe Barbieri (University of Pennsylvania); Juan Camilo Castillo (University of Pennsylvania); Nathaniel Hickok (MIT); Tobias Salz (MIT) |
| Abstract: | We characterize optimal urban transportation policies in the presence of congestion and environmental externalities and evaluate their welfare and distributional effects. We present a framework of a municipal government that implements different transportation equilibria through its choice of public transit policies—prices and frequencies—as well as road pricing. The government faces a budget constraint that introduces monopoly-like distortions. We apply this framework to Chicago, for which we construct a new dataset that comprehensively captures transportation choices. We find that road pricing alone leads to large welfare gains by reducing externalities, but at the expense of consumers (travelers), whose surplus falls even if road pricing revenues are fully rebated. The largest losses are borne by middle income consumers, who are most reliant on cars. We find that the optimal price of public transit is close to zero and goes along with a reduction in the frequency of buses and an increase in the frequency of trains. Combining these transit policies with road pricing eliminates budget constraints. This allows the government to implement higher transit frequencies and even lower prices, in which case consumer surplus increases after rebates. |
| Keywords: | Urban transportation, public transit subsidy design, road pricing, spatial equilibrium, Ramsey pricing |
| JEL: | L91 L5 L13 H23 R41 R48 |
| Date: | 2024–02–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:24-004&r=res |