Dissertation Defense: “Essays in Environmental and Labor Economics”, Luorao Bian, University of California, Santa Barbara

Speaker

Luorao Bian, University of California, Santa Barbara

Biography

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My fields are Environmental, Labor, Urban, and Health Economics. My research uses quasi-experimental designs and high-resolution spatial data to examine how environmental conditions and labor market regulations affect health, inequality, and welfare in cities. In my job market paper, I use fine-resolution spatial data to study the environmental costs of place-based labor policies and their welfare implications. The results show that unintended traffic congestion and air quality effects can shift the welfare impacts far from the intended policy goals. In earlier work, I also examined the health impacts of the urban heat island effect.

Title

“Essays in Environmental and Labor Economics”

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter examines the health impacts of urban heat and its implications for adaptation. Cities tend to be warmer than their suburban counterparts, a phenomenon known as the heat island effect. This effect varies significantly over time and across different neighborhoods. Using high resolution, satellite-derived surface temperature data and emergency medical service records from Northern California, this chapter employs fixed-effects Poisson regressions to analyze these variations. The findings show that neighborhood-level extreme heat has significant adverse health effects. However, urban heat—a highly localized and predominantly anthropogenic component of overall temperature—is less harmful than temperature shifts on a larger geographic scale. This is likely because people can better adapt to urban heat. These results highlight the importance of considering both overall temperature exposure and adaptation potential in urban environments. The effects of urban heat also vary by season; while additional warmth can provide protection during colder periods, it poses substantial health risks on warmer days. Finally, policy simulations suggest that mitigating extreme urban heat could effectively reduce health risks, particularly during warm periods. Tree planting, especially in less vegetated areas, emerges as a beneficial strategy for protecting urban populations.

The second chapter studies the unintended environmental externalities and spillovers of place-based policies, which broadly aim to boost local economies and improve welfare. Specifically, it examines city minimum wage ordinances, a popular place-based labor regulation intended to raise earnings and living standards for low-wage workers in over 60 U.S. cities. Using variation in timing and intensity across 17 California cities in the 2010s, I show that higher local wage floors increase rents and incentivize workers to live and work in neighboring areas outside the policy jurisdiction. These spatial shifts alter commuting patterns, increase traffic congestion, and worsen air quality, with neighboring areas more severely affected than policy cities, despite not being the direct targets. This worsening of air quality disproportionately affects poor and minority communities due to suboptimal amenities and limited adaptation capacity, rather than worker re-sorting. Simulations combining a traffic-emissions model with a particle-dispersion model attribute up to 2.8% of traffic-related emissions and 15 additional annual deaths to the ordinances. For low-wage workers, the costs of these unintended externalities offset 40% of the intended wage gains. In summary, the results suggest that environmental externalities, though indirect, can shift the welfare impacts of place-based policies far from their intended goals.

The final chapter, co-authored with Jeffrey Grogger and Jacob Bastian, focuses on the long-run impacts of U.S. safety net reform. Roughly 25 years ago, the U.S. safety net was substantially overhauled. Here, we ask how those reforms affected the educational attainment of youths who were teenagers at the time of implementation. We take a difference-in-differences approach, following adolescents from two generations roughly 20 years apart. In each generation, we compare two groups: one more likely to have been affected by the reforms, and one less likely. Under some assumptions, our approach identifies the joint, or bundled, effects of the constituent policy changes that make up safety net reform. We find evidence that the reforms may have reduced educational attainment for women, while having small positive effects on education for men. Finally, we offer suggestions as to why our findings differ from those of previous studies examining individual components of safety net reform.

JEL Codes: I15, Q54, R11, J31, J61, Q53, R41, I38, I24, J24, J13

Event Details

Join us for Luorao’s dissertation defense, where she will present her research titled “Essays in Environmental and
Labor Economics”. We invite you to attend this important academic milestone and learn more about her work in the field. To access a copy of the dissertation here, you must have an active UCSB NetID and password.