In my job market paper I estimate the effect of mining on Agricultural production and labor allocation. I use proprietary mine data, linked to household data from the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), to construct an event study of mine openings in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Input Competition vs. Pollution: The Effect of Mining on Agriculture in Africa
Abstract: I study how nearby mining affects agriculture through labor-market and environmental channels using two complementary designs. First, a 2×2 TWFE difference-in-differences around the 2012 opening of a large gold mine in Tanzania shows that farms within 15 km reduce family labor and planted area, without changing hired labor. Labor productivity increases though, and yields do not decline, consistent with input reallocation rather than a fall in total factor productivity. Second, pooling repeated cross-sections from Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda, I estimate a staggered event study for different distance bins from a mine. Near-mine farms exhibit persistent post-opening reductions in family labor beginning about two years after opening; farther farms show little change. In both designs, output losses are explained by lower inputs, not lower efficiency, and suggestive evidence on soil and rooting conditions show no short-run deterioration due to mine openings. Together, the evidence points to labor-market competition as opposed to pollution as the dominant short-run mechanism through which mining affects nearby farms, with effects concentrated closer to the mine.
Hosam Ibrahim 