We examine three reforms to property rights introduced by the United States in the Philippines in the early 20th century: the redistribution of large estates to their tenants, the creation of a system of secure land titles, and a homestead program to encourage cultivation of public lands. During...

Over 2 billion people lack clean drinking water. Existing solutions face high costs (piped water) or low demand (point-of-use chlorine). Using a 60,000 household cluster-randomized experiment we test an increasingly popular alternative: decentralized treatment and home delivery of clean water to...

We exploit recent molecular genetics evidence on the genetic basis of arsenic excretion and unique information on family links among respondents living in different environments from a large panel survey within a theoretical framework incorporating optimizing behavior to uncover the hidden costs...

We explore the first period of sustained decline in child mortality in the U.S. and provide estimates of the independent and combined effects of clean water and effective sewerage systems on under-five mortality. Our case is Massachusetts, 1880 to 1920, when authorities developed a sewerage and...

Many water utilities use outdoor watering restrictions based on assigned weekly watering days to promote conservation and delay costly capacity expansions. We find that such policies can lead to unintended consequences - customers who adhere to the prescribed schedule use more water than those...

This paper provides estimates of the effects of in utero exposure to contaminated drinking water on fetal health. We examine the universe of birth records and drinking water testing results for the state of New Jersey from 1997 to 2007. Our data enable us to compare outcomes across siblings who...

On the fortieth anniversary of the Clean Water Act this paper reports the first quantitative assessment of the aggregate trends in water quality in the U.S. using a single standard over the years 1975 to 2011. The analysis suggests that fresh water lakes for the nation as a whole are about at...

Recent writings on China's water situation often portray China's water problems as severe and suggest that water availability could threaten the sustainability of China's future growth. However, China's high growth of the last 20 years or more has been obtained with relatively little increase in...

Assessing the impact of lead exposure is difficult if individuals select on the basis of their characteristics into environments with different exposure levels. We address this issue with data from when the dangers of lead exposure were still largely unknown, using new evidence on intelligence...

We study the demand for household water connections in urban Morocco, and the effect of such connections on household welfare. In the northern city of Tangiers, among homeowners without a private connection to the city's water grid, a random subset was offered a simplified procedure to purchase...