Essays on Environmental and Health Economics

This thesis unravels some aspects the complex relationship between anthropogenic activities inducing environmental externalities and human health under an economic perspective. The first chapter analyses the causal impact of manure spreading on fine particulate matter concentrations, as well as respiratory and cardiovascular hospitalisations, mortality rate at discharge, and treatment costs using air quality and hospital discharge data from the Lombardy region in Italy. Exogenous variation in spreading prohibitions is used to design a repeated event-study framework. It is estimated an increase of in PM2.5 concentrations in the five days following a ban lift, paired with a spike in urgent hospitalisations, and higher hospital mortality rate during spreading events, which impose a financial burden of 30.9 to 67.7 million euros per year. The second chapter investigates deeper the linkage between livestock farming and atmospheric pollution by studying the impact of bovine and swine farming on the concentration levels of ammonia (NH3) and coarse particulate matter (PM10) in Lombardy's atmosphere. Our econometric model of cattle and swine variation and simulations indicate that bovine bovine and swine farming could account for up to 25\% of local pollution exposure, emphasizing the need for targeted mitigation strategies. The third chapter studies how soil aridity impacts child wellbeing in Sub-Saharan Africa. Among the numerous implications of climate change, water access for people worldwide remains a key concern. we find that infants born in arid areas are comparatively more likely to die under the age of 5 and be systematically underweight at birth. In addition, we show how aridity reduces the effect of rainfall on child wellbeing and drives substantial heterogeneity in the estimated response to increasing precipitation.