Gemma Dipoppa, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Brown University
Air pollution in South Asia is one of the largest health emergencies on the planet responsible for two million deaths every year. A leading cause of this pollution, crop residue burning (CRB), is theoretically hard to curb because millions of spatially dispersed farmers rationally practice CRB while action against any one of them involves high marginal costs but low marginal returns. We study the administration of CRB using a decade of wind, fire, and health data from satellites and DHS surveys. Contrary to the idea that bureaucrats have limited efficacy in managing tough environmental problems, we show that CRB responds to bureaucrats’ jurisdictional incentives: when wind takes pollution to neighboring jurisdictions, CRB increases; when CRB pollutes the home jurisdiction, it decreases. Both effects monotonically increase as one approaches the district borders where bureaucratic incentives to exert control or let pollution happen sharpen. The effects are larger on the India-Pakistan border, where inter-jurisdictional cooperation is difficult. We also show that bureaucratic action against CRB creates deterrence among polluters. Finally, using an atmospheric model, we estimate large impacts of bureaucratic control over CRB on child mortality. (Co-author: Saad Gulzar)