Conference Agenda

As economies seek to decarbonize heavy industry, quantifying the local tradeoffs between environmental quality and economic activity is essential. This paper examines the environmental, health, and labor market impacts of coal-intensive, blast furnace-based steel production using historical evidence from the United States and contemporary evidence from China. Leveraging data on 242 U.S. blast furnaces operating in 1965 and a staggered difference-in-differences design, we estimate the causal effects of blast furnace closures on air pollution, employment, and infant mortality from the 1960s through the 2010s. We find that closures reduced Total Suspended Particles (TSP) by 11.5 μg/m³ within two years and lowered infant mortality by 0.36 deaths per 1,000 live births (2.4 percent), with substantially larger gains for non-white populations. Manufacturing employment declined following closures but was largely offset by gains in non-manufacturing jobs, leaving total employment unchanged. Complementary evidence from China shows that new steel plant openings increase PM2.5 concentrations by nearly 2 μg/m³ within four years. Together, these results highlight the substantial public health co-benefits of transitioning away from coal-intensive blast furnace steel production, with implications for industrial decarbonization in developing economies.

This paper estimates the impacts of ozone pollution on hospitalizations, medical expenditure, and in-hospital mortality using inpatient admission records from 1,087 hospitals in China between 2017 and 2021. Leveraging an instrumental variable based on ozone concentrations in nearby upwind cities, we find that ozone significantly increases all-cause hospitalizations and medical expenditure. Ozone elevates hospital admissions across a broader range of diseases than previously documented, and the hospitalization cost of 1-standard deviation increase in ozone is larger than that of PM2.5. Ozone reduces the average number of doctors per inpatient and increases the all-cause in-hospital mortality rate in emergency departments, suggesting that ozone-induced surges in healthcare demand generate hospital crowding, which lowers the quality of care and worsens patient outcomes.

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.

This paper uses high-frequency data on fine particulate matter air pollution (PM 2.5) to study the effects of high pollution on health outcomes in Mexico City. We combine hourly monitoring station data on air pollution and weather conditions with a rich dataset of 10 million health episodes between 2003 and 2019, including deaths, hospitalizations, and urgent care visits. We disaggregate daily mean concentrations of PM 2.5 using the daily share of hours with PM 2.5 concentration above each WHO threshold to uncover a positive non-linear and convex relationship between hourly air pollution concentrations and same-day respiratory health outcomes of all severities. Specifically, a 1% increase in the share of hours with PM 2.5 concentrations above the highest WHO interim threshold (IT1) increases the number of respiratory deaths, hospitalizations, and urgent care visits per 1 million inhabitants by 0.001, 0.0008, and 0.024, respectively. We find that hours above IT1 have effects on respiratory health outcomes that are 20 to 30 times greater than those of hours above the Air Quality Guideline, the lowest WHO threshold. Furthermore, 1 additional hour a day with PM 2.5 above IT1 has the same effects on respiratory health outcomes as increasing the daily average concentration of PM 2.5 in Mexico City by 41 μg/m3. We find that the effects of PM 2.5 on respiratory mortality and morbidity are distributed differently across the age distribution and that the effect of PM 2.5 on respiratory deaths is driven by individuals with lower educational attainment.

This paper studies the pollution and health impacts of mandatory flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) at coal-fired power plants in China. Leveraging the staggered rollout of desulfurization mandates, we implement stacked difference-in-differences designs to estimate the effects on sulfur dioxide (SO\textsubscript{2}) pollution and respiratory system (RES) mortality. FGD installation leads to rapid and persistent reductions in local SO\textsubscript{2} and RES mortality, with no detectable effects on non-targeted pollutants or local economic development. Using FGD rollout as an instrument for SO\textsubscript{2}, we show that higher pollution causally increases respiratory mortality. Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that the monetized health benefits of desulfurization substantially exceed installation costs. The results demonstrate that environmental regulation can yield large health gains without impeding economic growth, offering policy-relevant evidence for pollution control in rapidly industrializing economies.

Despite extensive evidence on air pollution's health effects, surprisingly little is known about whether individuals actively avoid pollution exposure. This constitutes a critical open question, since behavioral responses both attenuate estimated health impacts and represent distinct welfare costs. In this paper, I study avoidance behavior in response to short-term air pollution shocks using high-frequency mobility data from Spain. Combining a unique anonymized mobile phone–based mobility dataset for more than 2,700 municipalities with ground-level PM10 measurements and detailed weather controls, I estimate the causal effect of air pollution on mobility patterns. To address endogeneity, I exploit exogenous variation in PM10 generated by Saharan dust intrusions (calima) as an instrumental variable. The unique characteristics of the data allow me to disaggregate trips by distance and destination type (home, work, frequent vs. infrequent locations). The results show that increases in PM10 lead to modest reductions in short-distance mobility, partly offset by increases in medium-distance trips. Heterogeneity by destination type shows particularly strong increases in trips to infrequent locations, suggesting adjustments consistent with avoidance behavior rather than purely health-driven constraints. Importantly, my results imply smaller effects than reported in the previous literature, which exploits salient variation in air pollution in China or due to wildfires. My findings highlight the importance of accurately accounting for behavioral responses when estimating the welfare costs of air pollution and its health impacts.

This study estimates how short-run exposure to extreme temperatures affects hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). Using German administrative health data (2005--2023) linked to local weather, I exploit quasi-random daily temperature variation during the first three days of admission. I find that extreme heat significantly increases HAI risk: each day ≥ 30°C raises infection probability by 0.06 percentage points (1.43 percent), while extreme cold reduces it. These effects are concentrated among vulnerable patients, high-risk procedures, smaller hospitals, and historically cooler regions. These findings highlight a critical clinical channel through which climate change impacts healthcare systems.