Working Papers 

Lead Poisoning from Relocation of Lead-Acid Battery Production for Electric Vehicles from China to Bangladesh, with Amrita Kundu and Erica Plambeck 

This paper investigates the implications of the pollution haven hypothesis in the context of lead-acid battery outsourcing from China to Bangladesh and its impact on maternal health, measured by terminated pregnancies. Leveraging a quasi-experimental design, we exploit the natural variation in exposure to used lead-acid battery (ULAB) recycling and smelting operations in Bangladesh to examine the effects on the occurrence of terminated pregnancies. Using georeferenced data from ULAB facilities from Pure Earth’s Toxic Site Identification Program (TSIP) and Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) datasets, we find robust evidence that the proximity to ULAB facilities significantly increases the likelihood of terminated pregnancies among women. Using a standard difference-in-difference methodology, our findings indicate that women who reside in close proximity to ULAB facilities experience a 5-6% higher rate of terminated pregnancies compared to those living farther away. Our findings contribute to the pollution haven effect and hypothesis literature, providing empirical support for the detrimental health consequences associated with the relocation of pollution-intensive industries. Moreover, we shed light on the underexplored area of maternal health outcomes related to lead exposure, highlighting the urgent need for stricter regulations and sustainable practices in the battery manufacturing industry. 

Dishonesty and Public Goods Provision: A Tale of Tax-Evading Politicians

coverage -  World Bank Development Impact  

Presented at: 

19th Midwest International Economic Development Conference (MIEDC), University of Minnesota, 2022;

Pacific Conference for Development Economics (PacDev), UC-Berkeley, 2020;

Southern Economic Association (SEA) 90th Annual Meeting, 2020;

Urban Economics Association (UEA), Federal Reserve Bank, Philadelphia, 2019;

Young Economists Symposium (YES), New York University, 2018;

Elected politicians are instrumental in providing public goods to their constituencies. On one hand, dishonest politicians can expropriate public funds for personal use, thus reducing the funds available for public goods provision. On the other hand, through clientelistic and patronage politics, dishonest politicians can give appropriated funds back to citizens. I study how dishonest politicians affect public goods provision in their constituencies. To identify dishonest politicians, I determine whether they evaded income taxes conditional on their minimum earnings and occupation, using a unique dataset based on the asset disclosure and tax forms candidates submit prior to elections in Bangladesh. Directly comparing constituencies represented by dishonest and honest politicians will not reveal the causal effects on public goods provision and economic development, since constituencies that elect dishonest politicians may systematically differ from the ones that do not. I rely on close elections, in which a dishonest politician narrowly defeats an honest one, and a regression discontinuity design to examine the effects of dishonest politicians on public goods provision and economic progress. Between 2009-10 and 2014-15, I find that in sub-districts that narrowly elected dishonest politicians, 27.3% fewer households received social safety net benefits compared with sub-districts that narrowly elected honest politicians. To analyze the effect between 2014-15 and 2019-20, I use a number of health and infrastructure variables at the sub-district level to develop an index of public goods provision using principal component analysis. I find that constituencies with dishonest leaders have a 0.74 standard deviation lower index value than constituencies with honest leaders. Results are quantitatively similar under the choice of different bandwidths and are robust to various specifications. Furthermore, categorizing sub-districts by wealthy dishonest versus wealthy honest leaders, measured by politicians’ total assets above the mean value in 2014 -  compare long-term economic development, proxied by growth of nighttime light brightness. I find that sub-districts with wealthy dishonest leaders have 5.75% point lower growth in night-time light brightness. Using my own estimates to convert night-time light brightness to GDP growth, I find 0.94% lower yearly GDP growth per sub-district under wealthy dishonest leaders. To understand the mechanism, I provide evidence from sub-district-level budgets that show statistically significant lower constituency-wide expenditure by dishonest politicians. I also show empirically that public goods provision does not depend on the ability of politicians, as measured by years of education, and politicians’ honesty and ability are independent of each other. 

A Business Case for Human Rights at Work? Experimental Evidence on Labor Trafficking and Child Labor at Brick Kilns in Bangladesh with Grant Miller,  Debashish Biswas, Aprajit Mahajan, Kim Singer Babiarz, Nina Brooks, Jessie Brunner, Jack Shane, Sania Ashraf, Sameer  Maithel Shoeb Ahmed, Mohammad Rofi Uddin, Mahbubur Rahman, Steve Luby, NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES ,  Working Paper 32829 . 

Globally, coercive labor (i.e., forced, bonded, and/or trafficked labor) and child labor are disproportionately prevalent in environments with weak regulatory enforcement and state capacity. Effective strategies for addressing them may therefore need to align with the private incentives of business owners, not relying on government action alone. Recognizing this, we test a ‘business case’ for improving work conditions and promoting human rights using a randomized controlled trial across nearly 300 brick kilns in Bangladesh. Among study kilns, rates of coercive and child labor are high: about 50% of sampled workers are trafficked, and about 70% of kilns use child labor. Our experiment introduced a production method that increased kiln productivity and revenue, and we test if these productivity gains in turn increase worker “compensation” (including better work conditions). Because adoption of the method requires important changes in worker routines, we also test if providing information to kiln owners about positively incentivizing workers to enhance adoption (and hence business revenue) can lead to better work conditions. We find no evidence that productivity gains alone reduced labor trafficking or child labor, but adding the information intervention reduced child labor by 25-30% without reducing revenue or increasing costs. 

Does Trade with Multinationals induce Greener Production? Evidence from the Bangladesh Fashion Industry with Kazi Iqbal,  Kazuki Motohashi, and Haruka Takayama

IGC Working Paper 

Fund recipient of Murata Science Foundation, Japan.

Fund recipient from IGC.

There is growing attention to the need for firms to ensure that their suppliers meet production standards (i.e., responsible sourcing). This practice is particularly prevalent in the apparel industry, as buyers—especially multinationals with well-known brands— often require their suppliers to comply with stringent environmental standards. We study how trading with global fashion brands affects the environmental performance of their suppliers in Bangladesh. Using a novel dataset that combines custom data with river water quality data, we find that an increase in the number of exporters to brand multinationals improves the river water quality surrounding these exporters. Our finding highlights the crucial role multinational buyers play in mitigating industrial pollution, particularly in developing countries with weaker regulatory enforcement. 

Work in progress

The holy dip: Religion and the pollution of rivers and health outcomes in India with Kazuki Motohashi and Sheetal Sekhri (draft coming soon)  Slides 

Presentation: SEA, 2023, New Orleans (upcoming); Global Health Seminar, Stanford University (2023)

Religion is one of the most important aspects of human society. Around 85% of the world’s population follows some kind of organized religion (Schofield 2020). From the aspect of economic progress, religious practices often have a negative impact (Montero & Yang 2022, Yanagizawa-Drott 2015). However, religious activities increase religiosity – a form of social capital. In the economic literature, there is a gap in understanding the impact of religious activities on environmental pollution and on public health. There are two reasons behind the paucity of research on this issue – identification challenges and sensitivity around the subject. In our paper, we bridge this gap in the literature by applying a natural experiment to study the impact of the Kumbh Mela on river pollution and on public health in India. Kumbh Mela is a congregation of the Hindu religion and the biggest religious festival in human society. More than 100 million people gather for 55 days around the four major cities in India – Prayagraj (Allahabad), Haridwar, Trimbak (Nashik), and Ujjain every four years. The ritual involves bathing, cremation, and food consumption along with accommodation around the bank of the major three rivers in India. However, this generates an enormous amount of human and material waste, which poses a significant risk to the environment and public health. We use the difference in difference and event study specifications to causally measure the impact of Kumbh Mela on river pollution and on health indicators. We use the river station water quality data of Central Water Commission from 2000 to 2019 and merge that with Greenstone and Hanna’s (2014) dataset to get data from the 1990s. We use a 30-Kilometer buffer zone from the rivers and a 100-kilometer buffer zone from the Kumbh Mela districts to be in the sample of our analysis. We identify treatment water stations located downstream within Kumbh Mela districts based on district boundaries, GPS locations of stations, and elevation data (digital elevation model). Similarly, upstream water stations are used as control applying similar selection criteria. Within our study period, we have Kumbh Mela occurring every three years from 1989 (including the smaller congregations) till 2019 in the four major cities. Using the difference in difference specification (two-way fixed effects), we found a higher level of Fecal coliform (FCF) in the treatment districts, which is statistically and economically significant. To understand the effect on public health, we use the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 4 as it contains cluster-level GPS information of households. Using the same difference-in-difference and event-study specifications, we are finding some indications (with some noises) of a higher level of mortality in the treatment districts. Our analysis further shows that this higher level of mortality could be attributed to the higher level of diarrhea in the children of the treatment districts.

Automatic Coal Feeder: Refining a technology to reduce black carbon emissions from South Asian brick kilns with Steve Luby, Nina Brooks,  Debashish Biswas, Md. Rofi Uddin, and Sameer Maithel, Shoeb Ahmed,  Mahbubur Rahman, and ME170 Students

Please see Stanford Luby Lab to learn more