In this study, we show that changes in electricity prices in China have significant environmental consequences through its effect on industrial pollution emissions concentrations. To investigate this relationship, we pair a novel dataset of hourly smokestack-level pollutant emissions of industrial plants in Anhui, China with changes in hourly electricity prices. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) regression model, we find that pollution emissions from these plants have an inverse relationship with electricity prices.

We combine survey responses to subjective well-being (SWB) questions with air pollution data to recover Chinese residents' valuation of air quality improvements. Motivated by theoretical models of ‘projection bias’ and ‘recency bias’, we posit that one's SWB (and valuation) is affected disproportionately by more recent experiences with air pollution, even though long-term air pollution is more detrimental to one's actual well-being.

Identifying a demand function for air quality is a key input to calculate welfare measurements of pollution abatement policies. We defined intra-urban housing submarkets to apply a Second Stage hedonic pricing model that allowed us to identify an inverse demand function for PM10 reductions in Bogotá. The monthly benefits of compliance with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standard (50 μg/m3 – annual average), and the far more stringent World Health Organization standard (20 μg/m3 – annual average) are valued at US$12.16 and US$189.64 per household, respectively.

Improved cook stoves (ICS) have been widely touted for their potential to deliver the triple benefits of improved household health and time savings, reduced deforestation and local environmental degradation, and reduced emissions of black carbon, a significant short-term contributor to global climate change. Yet diffusion of ICS technologies among potential users in many low-income settings, including India, remains slow, despite decades of promotion.

More than 3 billion people use wood fuels for their daily cooking needs, with detrimental health implications related to smoke emissions. Best practice global initiatives emphasize the dissemination of clean cooking stoves, but these are often expensive and suffer from interrupted supply chains that do not reach rural areas. This emphasis neglects that many households in the developing world cook outdoors. Our calculations suggest that for such households, the use of less expensive biomass cooking stoves can substantially reduce smoke exposure.