Conference Agenda

Crop residue burning is a major source of seasonal air pollution across South Asia, yet the role of agricultural cropping systems as a structural driver of this pollution and

its consequences for fetal health remain largely unexplored. In India, districts following the rice–wheat double-cropping system face two burning seasons per year, generating

substantially more crop residue smoke than monocropping regions. Using a panel of Indian districts and an area-of-effect model that exploits quasi-random variation in seasonal wind patterns, I show that upwind rice–wheat intensity causally increases downwind PM2.5 and fetal mortality. A one standard deviation increase in upwind rice–wheat intensity raises downwind pollution by nearly 1 µg/m3 and increases stillbirth rates by approximately 3 per 10,000 births, a 2% increase relative to the sample mean. I further show that transported pollution is the primary mechanism linking upwind

rice–wheat intensity to downwind fetal mortality.

Global forest cover was in steady decline for millennia prior to modern industrialization. This paper studies how technological progress in agriculture shaped long-run forest cover in pre-industrial societies. I begin by developing an equilibrium bio-economic model to analyze how agricultural productivity influenced land allocation decisions and forest cover in the presence of limited trade and Malthusian population dynamics. I show that while early agricultural innovations may have spared forests, beyond a threshold further advances necessarily expand cultivation and accelerate deforestation. I test these predictions using high-resolution Holocene forest reconstructions from fossil pollen data. Exploiting variation in the timing of the First Agricultural Revolution, I find that early adoption led to a sustained 25% per-millennium decline in forest cover relative to later adopters. In a complementary case study focusing on the introduction of the three-field rotation system in medieval Europe, I show that the system caused an immediate 20% reduction in forest cover followed by a long-run decline of 50%. Together, these results indicate that agricultural innovation was an important driver of global deforestation in the pre-industrial era.

Time use is a critical yet undermeasured dimension of individual and household well-being, especially in settings where dependence on natural resources and the time-intensity of their use are high. We assess and compare estimates of time use captured by households' primary cooks from (i) stylized time use questions, (ii) traditional time diaries, and (iii) hybrid time diaries, in rural Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Malawi. Leveraging data from an experimental study, we analyze discrepancies in time-use estimates generated by each elicitation method for several activities: fuel collection, cooking, household chores, unpaid work, and paid work. Results indicate that, compared to traditional time diaries, stylized questions and hybrid time diaries yield higher estimates for certain activities. Importantly, the hybrid method seems to exhibit the least bias. These results point to the importance of carefully measuring time use in impact evaluations of development and environmental interventions that aim to reduce time burdens or create new time use opportunities.

Environmental sustainability efforts in many developing countries are constrained by limited fiscal capacity, making external environmental assistance an important instrument for advancing global commitments under SDGs 12, 13 and 17. However, evidence on whether such assistance improves environmental outcomes and how its effectiveness interacts with domestic fiscal conditions remains limited. This study examines the environmental impact of aid in Africa’s ten largest recipient countries and assesses whether its effectiveness depends on domestic fiscal capacity. Using balanced panel data from 2002 to 2022 and applying fixed effects (FE), instrumental variable fixed effects (IV-FE) and instrumental variable generalised methods of moments (IV-GMM) estimators, the analysis shows that environmental aid is, on average, negatively associated with environmental quality but significantly enhances domestic revenue mobilisation, indicating a fiscal crowd-in effect. The results further reveal that the environmental effectiveness of aid is conditioned by domestic fiscal capacity, with higher income levels not necessarily strengthening revenue mobilisation, and by trade openness, which generates environmental and fiscal pressures. These findings highlight the need to integrate environmental aid into national budgeting systems, strengthen domestic fiscal capacity and coordinate aid with trade and industrial policies to support cleaner production, stronger environmental regulation and green industrial upgrading.