No. 996: The Role of Environmental Regulation: Evidence from India’s Crop Burning Crisis
Giulia Tozzi School of Economics & Finance, Queen Mary University of London
January 8, 2026
Abstract
This paper examines the impact of environmental regulation on crop-residue burning, air pollution, and health in Northern India. Exploiting a spatial regression discontinuity at the Punjab–Haryana border and satellite data from 2012–2023, I show that Haryana’s implementation of crop-residue burning regulation reduced rice-season fires by about one-third and increased the probability that a location is fire-free by roughly 80% relative to adjacent Punjab. Conditioning PM2.5 on local wind regimes, the induced fall in burning lowers burning-season PM2.5 on the Haryana side by roughly 9 µg/m3, about a 10% reduction relative to the local counterfactual just across the border. Applying standard concentration–response functions to the resulting exposure change implies ap-proximately 1,600–2,100 avoided premature deaths per year, of which about one in seven deaths averted occurs among under-five children. The results show that subnational regulatory action can reduce burning, pollution, and mortality even when externalities cross jurisdictional boundaries.
J.E.L classification codes:
Keywords: Air Pollution, Crop Burning, Environmental Regulation, Agri-Food Systems, Climate Mitigation, South Asia.