Three essays on environmental quality with polluting sectors: mining, electricity, and transportatio

Mining, electricity, and transportation are currently among the top the economic sectors contributing to environmental degradation around the world. This dissertation delves into recurring environmental problems associated to these polluting sectors through the application of several quasi-experimental methods and environmental valuation techniques. The first two essays elicit the value of proximity to environmental disamenities, namely, resource extraction sites and fossil fuel power stations. The third essay, evaluates the effectiveness of a command-and-control policy aimed at curbing pollution from automotive sources. Together, these three essays address relevant topics in non-market valuation and environmental regulation, and in settings that are pertinent to both developed and developing countries.;Essay one addresses whether resource extraction sites, mainly copper mines, represent an environmental disamenity to households. The opening of new extraction sites brings several economic benefits to the localities hosting the resource extraction. Yet, these sites generally impose detrimental effects on local environmental quality, in which case households may be willing to pay to avoid home locations near these sites. In this essay, I study whether the high-pollution potential of mining outweighs its local economic benefits in emerging economies using evidence from the housing market in Chile. I compare rental prices in locations hosting new openings to rental prices in places without mining, before and after the openings. Results indicate that resource extraction sites constitute a disamenity to households in emerging economies, who are willing to pay to avoid proximity to these facilities. These effects are higher among long-term residents, which represents evidence of taste-based sorting of households across space. The pollution potential of some of these economic sectors can be mitigated with the adoption of cleaner production technologies. Essay two delves into this idea by studying the market impacts of the coal-to-gas conversion process taking place in the United States during recent years. Given that natural gas burns cleaner than coal, switching the primary fuel source used in the electricity generation process should improve local air quality in the neighborhood of converting power plants. In this essay, I examine whether these local air quality improvements due to fuel switching are capitalized into higher housing prices of nearby homes. I use evidence of property transactions of several homes located at certain distances from both switching and coal-fired power plants, and I compare their sale prices before and after the conversion. Results show that this conversion is capitalized into higher housing prices in the vicinity of a unit that switched fuel. These market capitalizations follow immediately after the closure of coal-fired electricity generators, and not necessarily after the gas-fired units start operations.;Overall, the first two essays in this dissertation provide empirical evidence on how costly environmental pollution may be to the public. These costs are translated into dead-weight losses to society whenever they are not internalized by polluting units when interacting in the market. Environmental regulation, however, can offset these inefficiencies serving as an instrument to restore social equilibria. Essay three examines the efficiency of an environmental regulation mechanism used in Chile to reduced airborne pollution from the transportation sector by restricting driving of light-duty private vehicles. Driving restrictions constitute the main policy to regulate emissions from mobile sources in Chile. These bans are intensified during days of critical air pollution with the official issuance of 24-hour air quality episodes. I evaluate the effectiveness of this quantity-based instrument in curbing mobile source pollution using evidence from several pollutants from car emissions. I also look at the effects of these restrictions on car trips, and on the use of alternative modes of transportation. Results indicate that this mechanism effectively curtails the number of cars on the roads, thereby improving local air quality. Evidence suggests that the effectiveness of this mechanism, however, is conditional to their temporal duration, and to their issuance in conjunction with air quality episodes informing on the risks of outdoor exposure to pollution.