Essays on the economic consequences of environmental pollution and climate change in India

This thesis seeks to enhance our understanding of how the natural environment interacts with the process of economic development in low- and middle-income countries. The context for study in this thesis is India, home to almost 18 percent of the world’s population, and staring down climate change and various environmental pollution crises while pursuing economic growth to reduce widespread poverty. The four chapters uncover the environmental channels through which agricultural activity - the dominant source of employment in poor economies – affects, and is in turn affected by, the process of structural transformation. In chapter 1, I ask whether and how anti-poverty rural workfare programs affect the dependence of agricultural production on the weather. In chapter 2, I quantify the consequences of air pollution from seasonal but predictable agricultural fires on the size and spatial distribution of economic activity. In chapter 3, I document the economic costs from an increase in air pollution due to a groundwater conservation policy that unintentionally shifted agricultural fires into the winter. In chapter 4, I estimate the losses imposed by industrial water pollution on agricultural production. Taken together, these chapters drive home the vital importance of the natural environment to sustainable economic development.