Air Quality Impacts of Shale Gas Development in Pennsylvania

Ruohao Zhang, Huan Li, Neha Khanna, Alan J. Krupnick, Elaine Hill and Daniel M. Sullivan

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2023, vol. 10, issue 2, 447 - 486

Abstract: We estimate the impact of shale gas development on particulate matter pollution using a quasi-experimental setting in Pennsylvania where some wells were developed to produce natural gas whereas other wells were permitted but not drilled. In doing so, we utilize a novel empirical approach drawing upon insights from atmospheric chemistry to account for windblown pollution spillovers in a difference-in-differences framework. Utilizing a high frequency, high resolution satellite-based measure of PM pollution between 2000 and 2018, we identify causal increases in PM2.5 concentration ranging from 0.017 μg/m3 to 0.062 μg/m3 in the vicinity of over 20,000 wells, resulting in approximately 20 additional deaths between 2010 and 2017.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/721430 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/721430 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/721430

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().