 Dust storms and violent crimeJournal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2022, vol. 111, issue C Abstract: Dust storms are among the largest global sources of atmospheric particulate matter and have pronounced impacts on environmental conditions and can affect individual ways-of-life. In the US, dust storm activity is generally increasing in frequency due to ongoing climate change. I shed light on a previously unknown impact of these events (on violent crimes) by exploiting their periodic occurrences as a source of exogenous environmental shocks to air pollution and daily routines. Using high-frequency data and high-dimensional fixed effects, I find strong evidence that dust storm activity is associated with violent crimes. Importantly, I show that avoidance behaviors, triggered by dust storm warnings, can largely mitigate the observed violent crime impacts. Policy implications are discussed. Keywords: Dust storms; Violent crime; Warnings; PM2.5; Avoidance behaviors; Time use (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:111:y:2022:i:c:s0095069621001340 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2021.102590 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Environmental Economics and Management is currently edited by M.A. Cole, A. Lange, D.J. Phaneuf, D. Popp, M.J. Roberts, M.D. Smith, C. Timmins, Q. Weninger and A.J. Yates More articles in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management from Elsevier |
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