2025 Theses Doctoral

Essays on Health, Behavior, and the Environment

Wilson, Andrew

Rational management of our planetary resources requires that we understand the costs and benefits of available approaches and assign responsibility for actions taken by individuals, firms, or governments that threaten or further sustainable development. However, individuals invest in adaptation and change their short-term behavior to avoid environmental harms, complicating the evaluation and assignment of responsibility.

This dissertation brings data and methods from economics and Earth science to bear on three questions where adaptation and avoidance mediate connections between environmental conditions and well-being.

First, in the case of transboundary air pollution flows in Northeast Asia, use of an atmospheric model and careful accounting of simultaneous impacts amidst complementarities in health harm avoidance leads to a substantial reallocation of responsibility for health harms by emitting jurisdiction.

Second, in the case of the mortality burden of humid heat in Mexico, age-specific microdata analysis reveals that young people are more vulnerable than previously thought, perhaps because of their limited ability to choose when and how they avoid extreme temperatures.

Third, in the case of the impact of weather on rail operations in the U.S., rail operators' responses to weather risks generate delays that propagate through the rail network, driving up costs. In each case, behavioral responses to potentially harmful environmental conditions affect the distribution and total quantity of social harms, though for distinct reasons implying distinct preferred management approaches.