Dust Storms Reduce Economic Growth

Abstract

Dust storms are a common occurrence for populations residing in semi-arid environments and can result in a variety of immediate and long-term impacts. While previous literature documents many of these short-term effects, such as increases in respiratory disease and increases in traffic accidents (resulting from disrupted transportation networks), this is the first study to use exogenous variation in dust exposure due to long-range transport to study the effects of dust storms on economic activity. I instrument local dust values using dust emitted from the largest sources across the world. Economic growth is reduced by 4% per standard deviation increase in dust exposure after 5 years. The effects are of similar size in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the dust levels are much longer, so will have larger effects on growth from year to year. These dust storm impacts could be a contributing factor to reduced economic development, particularly in West Africa, and indicate that dust storms should be considered an important part of geographic endowments alongside other climate indicators.

Keywords: Dust Storms, natural disasters, Economic growth, Climate Change