Issues in Public Infrastructure Spending  and Transportation

You Zhou

This dissertation explores various environmental and health consequences of public infrastructure and transportation. It consists of three chapters. The first investigates the impact of government highway expenditure on emissions from freight and passenger vehicles. I develop a general equilibrium model to show that government highway expenditure increases passenger and freight emissions through raising speeds of travel which, in turn, induces more vehicle mileage on highways. Guided by theoretical results, I use an instrumental approach to estimate the induced carbon dioxide emissions of highway spending with a system of two equations. My empirical results confirm the theoretical findings. Moreover, the elasticity of highway spending to freight emissions is around two times higher than that to passenger emissions. In the second Chapter, I study the effect of Uber’s entry on alcohol-related behaviors across major U.S. metropolitan areas. With a difference-in-difference method, I identify that the introduction of Uber has a positive and significant effect on the intensive margin of alcohol consumption, measured by binge drinking. However, there is no impact of Uber on the extensive margin, measured by the number of drinking days, and drunk driving for the average adults. I further investigate the effect of Uber’s entry on drunk driving through the path of binge drinking. It indicates that the introduction of Uber might indirectly increase drunk driving by increasing binge drinking. My last Chapter analyzes the effect of traffic-related emissions on adult patients with asthma across various metropolitan areas in the U.S. outside of California. To address the potential endogeneity issues, I use highway density as an instrument for NO2 concentrations. My results show that NO2 has no general impact on asthma patients in my full-sample areas, but it can exacerbate those patients’ asthma conditions in hot areas. The disparity across regions in the U.S. outside of California indicates a need for adjusting the current regulations on vehicle emissions.

Issues in Public Infrastructure Spending and Transportation

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