Conference Agenda

This paper examines the overall long-term effects of the Two Control Zones policy, implemented by the Chinese government to reduce air pollution, on children's human capital development. Estimates show that those exposed to the policy during their year of birth are more likely to succeed the standardized high school entrance exam, and thus to enter the academic track instead of the less prestigious vocational track, 15 years later. Albeit positive, we find non-significant effect on the probability of attending a better quality academic high school. This suggests an improvement in the education performance of those at the lower part of the ability distribution. We also find evidence of an increased performance in the standardized national college entrance exam, 18 years later. These results provide an additional evidence in favor of environmental policies as promising inputs for human capital formation.

Manure management is a widespread soil fertilization practice in agriculture. Yet, little is known about the environmental and health threats posed by manure application. I estimate the causal effect of manure spreading on fine particulate matter concentrations, as well as respiratory and cardiovascular hospitalisations, mortality rate at discharge, and medical treatment costs using air quality and hospital discharge data from the Lombardy region in Italy. I exploit exogenous variation in spreading prohibitions to design a repeated event-study framework. I estimate an increase of around 27% in PM2.5 concentrations in the five days following a ban lift, paired with an increase in urgent hospitalisations, and a higher hospital mortality rate during spreading events. Conversely, it is found no significant difference in the cost per hospitalisation. I estimate the financial burden limited to this health threat to range between 30.9 and 67.7 million euros per year. Finally, I test the implications of a fully flexible regulatory framework to redistribute emissions over the winter calendar, estimating a reduction in days exhibiting harmful levels of PM between 13.1% and 3%.

This paper documents and examines the health consequences of the largest case of transboundary pollution in Europe. Specifically, we focus on the stark difference in particulate matter concentrations between Germany and Poland during winter. By exploiting exogenous changes in wind direction, we quantify the effect of winds blowing from the east on pollution and health outcomes in Germany. Our findings show that easterly winds increase the daily levels of PM2.5 across Germany, whereby the increase can reach up to 15 μg/m3 (80% increase over sample mean) for counties close to the Polish border. Using daily hospitalizations data, we find that these increases in PM2.5 translate into higher number of hospitalizations due to cardiovascular, respiratory and nervous system disease.

Citizens increasingly purchase stationary low-cost air quality sensors (LCS) to collect and disclose to the public information about air pollution levels in real-time. We study spatiotemporal diffusion patterns and spillover effects for this emerging technology using installation data from 11,873 stationary LCS adoptions in Germany from July 2016 through July 2022. Our analysis shows that LCS are installed at higher rates in areas that are wealthier, more urban, and have higher green voting shares. We also find evidence that locations near government monitors experience fewer LCS adoptions, suggesting a substitutive relationship between government and private monitoring initiatives. Finally, we employ fixed effects panel models with spatiotemporal neighbor variables to demonstrate that LCS installations have local spillover effects on new adoptions.