IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bcu/greewp/greenwp10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Vector-Borne Diseases and Economic Activity: Evidence from Historical Farmer Productivity in the US

Author

Listed:
  • Maurizio Malpede

Abstract

This study provides an estimation of the causal relationship between the reduction in malaria transmission and farmer agricultural productivity. Exploiting exogenous geographic variations in the stability of malaria and using historical disaggregated county data for the US together with a robust quasi-experimental approach, I show that the eradication of malaria led to approximately one fifth of the farmer agricultural productivity growth in the US. Using historical spatial data on cropland distribution within the US, I also show that the positive effect was entirely due to better health conditions rather than a greater availability of arable land. No effect is found on agricultural output per capita for more endemic counties, suggesting that the increase in farm output was compensated by the increase in population. Robustness checks from geographic variations in malaria stability within neighboring counties along with placebo treatments reinforce the positive effect of the eradication of malaria in the US on farmer agricultural productivity.

Suggested Citation

  • Maurizio Malpede, 2020. "Vector-Borne Diseases and Economic Activity: Evidence from Historical Farmer Productivity in the US," GREEN Working Papers 10, GREEN, Centre for Research on Geography, Resources, Environment, Energy & Networks, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    • Handle: RePEc:bcu:greewp:greenwp10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.unibocconi.it/iefe/bcu/papers/GREEN_wp10.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Malaria; Natural Resources; Agricultural Productivity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • N31 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • N32 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bcu:greewp:greenwp10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Carlotta Milani (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eabocit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.