Mark Van Orden
About me: I am a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of California, Irvine. My research interests include health and environmental economics, economic history, and political economy.
I am on the 2024 job market.
Contact Informationemail: vanordem@uci.edu
CV: Mark Van Orden CV
Job Market Paper: Pollution-Income Tradeoffs of Industrialization: Evidence from World War I
Research Overview: Who benefits from industrialization? This paper examines the health tradeoffs associated with steel industry growth in Ohio induced by the onset of World War I. Increased demand for steel during the war led to disproportionate wage growth in steel cities, but exposed downstream cities to increased water pollution. The inequitable distribution of these costs and benefits created geographic health disparities: rising incomes in steel cities helped mitigate pollution-related mortality, while downstream cities endured the pollution burden without compensating economic growth.
Data and Empirical Strategy: I combine individual-level and spatially-fine infant mortality data with newly-digitized data on city-level water supply, steel production and plant location, and city-level bank deposits, to estimate the effect of rapid industrial growth on infant mortality risk from 1909-1925. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, I compare infant mortality risk between cities with polluted water supplies and control cities with unpolluted supplies. I document geographic disparities by assessing how economic exposure to the iron and steel industry attenuates pollution's effects.
Findings: Steel industry water pollution (i.e. heavy metals including lead and cadmium) increases infant mortality risk by 3 percentage points. Rising incomes in industrial cities help mitigate pollution's deleterious impact.
Mechanisms: I document 3 key mechanisms First, per capita bank deposits, which approximate average household income, increase disproportionately in steel cities. Second, city governments use this expanded tax base to increase public health expenditures. Third, households respond to information about the pollution and seek alternative water sources.
The third mechanism has an interesting historical context. Contemporary public health experts were unaware of the pernicious consequences of heavy metal pollution. The public was largely unaware of water quality issues until steel plants began polluting phenol, a byproduct of the coking industry that renders water supplies unpalatable. Using a 1924 survey of public complaints to waterworks, I find that information about water quality can motivate pollution avoidance and improve health outcomes.
Conclusion: Industrialization can drive health disparities. Government intervention is critical to promote equitable growth.
Research
Traumatic Financial Experiences and Persistent Changes in Financial Behavior: Evidence from the Freedman's Savings Bank - Joint with Vellore Arthi and Gary Richardson. NBER Working Paper (June, 2024)
Abstract: The failure of the Freedman’s Savings Bank, (FSB) one of the only Black-serving banking institutions in the early post-bellum South, was an economic catastrophe and one of the great episodes of racial exploitation in post-Emancipation history. Can events like these permanently alter financial preferences and behavior? To test this, we examine the impact of FSB collapse on insurance-holding, an alternative savings vehicle that was both accessible and extremely popular over the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We document a sharp and persistent increase in insurance demand in affected counties following the shock, driven disproportionately by Black customers. We also use FSB migrant flows to disentangle place-based and cohort-based effects. In so doing, we provide evidence identifying psychological and cultural scarring as a distinct mechanism underlying the shift in financial behavior induced by the bank’s collapse. Horizontal and intergenerational transmission of preferences further help explain the shock’s persistent effects on financial behavior.
Ordinary Lives: Insurance and Savings in America: 1861 to 1941 - Joint with Vellore Arthi and Gary Richardson. Working Paper (September, 2024)
Abstract: Life insurance was the principal method of old-age savings for American households from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, a period prior to the advent of OASDI and the popularization of employer-sponsored retirement or pension programs. Despite its historical importance both as a precursor to Social Security and as households’ primary mechanism for savings and investment throughout much of American history, life insurance has been overlooked in the literature. This paper sheds light on the function of life insurance in American households, and provides valuable context for understanding the evolution of American old-age savings from private insurance toward nationalized retirement savings programs such as Social Security. To do so, this paper focuses on ordinary life insurance, the most popular of these life insurance products. It first describes the properties of standard policies, which, though complex, offered customers a range of lucrative and useful options that could be tailored to their particular needs. It then establishes why life insurance was such an attractive option to nineteenth- and early twentieth century Americans, relative to other savings vehicles, in the low-peacetime-inflation environment of the pre-WWII period and in the absence of formal retirement plans of the kind most Americans rely on today.
Economic Consequences of Corporate Campaign Contributions: Evidence from the Electric Utility Industry - Working Paper (August, 2024)
Abstract: This paper examines the regulatory, investment, and performance effects of legalizing electric utility campaign contributions. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, I leverage existing state campaign finance legislation and the 2005 repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which lifted a federal prohibition on utility campaign contributions from the corporate treasury. Utility contributions influence regulatory policy and yield significant returns for investors. This regulatory dynamic distorts utility investment strategies and deteriorates service reliability. Customers consequently pay more for less reliable service. These results challenge the perspective that corporations do not benefit from campaign contributions.
A previous draft of this paper is published as a working paper at the Center for Growth and Opportunity (October, 2023) under the title Power Play: Political Contributions and Regulatory Capture in the Electric Utility Industry
Ongoing Research:
The Health Benefits of Steel Industry Decline: Evidence from the Great Depression
Early-Career Trajectories during the Great Depression: Evidence from Large-Scale Longitudinal Microdata - Joint with Vellore Arthi and Gary Richardson
The Peabody Education Fund and Origins of Public Education in the South
Mayors of America: Immigrant Assimilation into Local Politics during the Age of Mass Migration