Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 24th Aug 2026, 12:48:17am WEST
External resources will be made available 30 min before a session starts. You may have to reload the page to access the resources.
|
Daily Overview |
| Session | |
|
Egg-Timer: Air Pollution and Health Location: D-107 Session Chair: Robin Kottmann, RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research | |
    | |
A Toast to Health? Cognitive Returns for Children Conceived Under Local Pesticide Regulations 1: Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy; 2: Department of Economics and Finance, Tor Vergata University; 3: CEIS Tor Vergata; 4: IZA; 5: CESifo The expansion of Prosecco vineyards in Italy's Veneto region has led to increased pesticide use, raising concerns about maternal health and child neurodevelopment. We study the medium-term cognitive effects of prenatal pesticide exposure, exploiting the staggered rollout of municipal regulations following the 2012 Regional Pesticide Guideline, which introduced buffer zones, anti-drift standards, and pesticide bans. By linking local adoption dates to population-wide second-grade standardized test scores, we find that children conceived after policy adoption score 0.2 standard deviations higher on mathematics tests. We detect no effect on Italian language scores, indicating that improvements are concentrated in quantitative reasoning. We show that the results are robust to several potential threats. Estimates are larger when we use second-order neighbouring municipalities as controls, consistent with downward bias from spillovers onto adjacent controls. Student transfer data indicate modest sorting into treated municipalities, which biases our estimates downward. Municipal fine revenues remain stable following adoption, indicating high policy compliance driven by deterrence. These results demonstrate that local command-and-control policies can successfully reduce environmental externalities and improve medium-term child cognitive development. | |