Conference Agenda

We investigate how air pollution impacts outdoor activity avoidance, leveraging changes in local wind direction in an instrumental variable setup for causal identification. Our findings reveal a substantial reduction in time spent outdoors during polluted days, mainly driven by decreased engagement in employment-related activities. This effect varies significantly across age, education level, usual principal activity status, consumption expenditure, and residential location. Moreover, reduced outdoor time due to air pollution can potentially promote a more equitable allocation of unpaid caregiving responsibilities within households via increased male involvement. Our results remain robust under various sensitivity tests.

In contrast to measures such as bans or taxes that regulate car use, this study investigates the effectiveness of monetary incentives to encourage individuals to give up driving. Specifically, we focus on an annual incentive payment scheme where participants receive a payment for giving up all of their cars, with the opportunity to reassess their decision each year. In addition, we examine an alternative scheme that differs in timing and does not require to giving up all cars. By conducting a survey experiment with 1,143 German

citizens, we measure their willingness to accept these measures and find acceptance rates for the annual payment scheme ranging from 6% to 19%, with variations in acceptance rates as a result of offering different annual payment amounts between €300 and €3,000. Notably, about half of the respondents expressed to keep their car regardless of the payment amounts offered. Based on these findings, we estimate the potential carbon dioxide abatement costs of the annual payment scheme to range between €156 and €1,557 per tonne.

During the past three decades, European countries have undergone a significant transformation in their energy landscape, shifting from coal to natural gas as primary feedstock for energy production.

This paper exploits detailed geolocalised information on coal power stations in Europe, combined with 0.1 × 0.1 gridded data on P M2.5 and regional health statistics, to investigate the air pollution and health outcomes of the retirement of coal plants in 21 European countries during the past thirty years. To my knowledge, this is the first attempt to isolate the environmental and health implications associated with the decommissioning of conventional energy units in Europe. I find that coal power generation affects P M2.5 concentration levels within approximately 50 km from the plants. This finding guides the difference-in-differences research design, which compares health and socioeconomic outcomes in areas near a conventional power plant to those in areas slightly farther away. Preliminary estimates indicate that the decommissioning of coal plants leads to consistent health improvements, lowering the mortality rates in nearby regions by 0.109 per 1000 inhabitants, which translates to a 1.1 % variation in the local mortality rates. These results suggest that shutting down coal plants has substantial health benefits in the surrounding areas, and underscore the significant environmental factors linked to conventional power plants.

This paper investigates the impact of integrating bike-sharing services into a major transportation mobile app on ridership in New York City. Specifically, it examines the effect of Lyft's acquisition of Motivate (a bike-share company) and the subsequent inclusion of their bike-sharing services in the Lyft app. Using a rich dataset from the Indego and Citi Bike systems, the study employs difference in differences and triple difference estimators to compare ridership in New York City and Philadelphia, before and after the integration, among subscriber and non-subscriber groups. The results show a 7% overall increase in ridership in New York City, driven entirely by non subscribers (marginal users), which increased usage by a staggering 77%. The findings contribute to the literature on public bicycle usage and technological adoption, highlighting the importance of ease-of-use features in promoting sustainable urban transit and the provision of information. Additionally, the study offers insights into the benefits of integrating different mobility (or other) services into a single platform, supporting the concept of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in this context. Finally, our results provide valuable information for city planners and policymakers on how to promote cycling, which has the potential to significantly reduce congestion, local air

pollution concentrations, and carbon emissions.