Conference Agenda

Work-from-home (WFH) arrangements experienced an unprecedented boom since the

Covid-19 crisis, raising questions about their environmental impact. This study investigates the causal effect of WFH on PM2.5 concentrations, the most harmful air pollutant globally, using high-resolution pollution data and employment records from France. We find that WFH contributes to higher PM2.5 levels, particularly in areas with a high prevalence of home-based workers. Our analysis reveals that residential emissions outweigh the reduction in transport-related pollution, leading to a net increase in air pollution. These findings highlight the need for policymakers to address the environmental challenges associated with the growing prevalence of WFH, particularly through energy efficiency improvements and cleaner residential heating technologies.

Encouraging the public to report possible environmental violations can be a way

to identify illegal polluting activity and subsequently improve the environment. However, responding to complaints is not costless and may divert limited resources away

from other enforcement activities. This paper investigates the impact of China’s environmental complaints on the allocation and intensity of on-site inspections in Jiangsu

Province. Estimating a Local Projection model, our results show that complaints trigger an immediate and sustained response from the regulator, increasing the probability

that a firm is inspected by around 12.6 percentage points in the month the complaint is

made and continuing to increase over the following two months. We find complaints do

not significantly reduce the number of other types of inspections and may even increase

the number of unplanned inspections, thereby increasing overall regulatory intensity.

Whereas traditionally, economic output and environmental quality were usually

understood as substitutes, recent scientific evidence increasingly points towards a complementary

relationship, especially in the context of high pollution contexts. This

paper focuses on a developed economy, Germany, and analyzes the impacts of comparatively

modest changes of air pollution on plant and firm-level outcomes in the

manufacturing sector. Using administrative data from Germany, we analyze the the

causal effect of air pollution on a range of plant- and firm-level outcomes, namely

production value, revenue, hours worked and salaries paid, allowing us to disentangle

productivity and absenteeism effects. Our results imply that air pollution negatively

impacts production and revenue in the German manufacturing sector. While findings

on hours worked are mixed, our results show that air pollution increases labor costs,

particularly for smaller firms, likely due to the need to compensate absences through

overtime. Larger firms are likely better able to absorb absences, which is why we

observe reduced hours worked for such firms. We can also show that effects of air

pollution materialize in the relatively short time frame of individual days.

The clean energy transition and large-scale deindustrialization have caused major changes

in the industrial landscape of many high-income economies. This paper investigates

how closures of large industrial facilities in Germany affect surrounding communities.

By exploiting quasi-random variation in the timing of facility shutdowns, I analyze the

neighborhood-level effects of these closures using data at the 1km x 1km grid cell level.

I find that shutdowns of industrial sites lead to significant improvements in environmental

amenities as represented by air quality. These environmental benefits, however, do

not capitalize into increasing housing prices. Instead, housing values fall by up to 5%

following facility shutdowns – a result that contrasts with existing evidence for the US

context. Neighborhoods affected by industrial closures also experience substantial local

downturns with average household income dropping by 4% in the most affected neighborhoods.

The resulting total annual income loss attributable to facility shutdowns amounts

to e0.7 - e1.9 billion. Using a simplified model of neighborhood choice, I further show

that neighborhoods surrounding a closed industrial site become less amenable over time.

These findings have important implications for place-based policies in the context of significant

structural change. Additionally, using the newly assembled granular data, I show

that there exists significant inequality in the exposure to fine particulate matter across the

income distribution in Germany.