We conducted a large-scale lost letter experiment with a novel design across all seasons in Beijing to study whether ambient air pollution influences helping behavior. We assessed air pollution by PM2.5 and PM10. Our novel design allowed us to collect real-time granular data from the streets. To...

Little is known about how children of high-income expatriate families, often from rich nations, adapt to temporary residence in a severely polluted city of the developing world. We use a six-year panel of 6,500 students at three international schools in a major city in north China to estimate...

We investigate the impact of fetal exposure to air pollution on health outcomes at birth in Italy in the 2000s combining information on mother’s residential location from birth certificates with information on PM10 concentrations from air quality monitors. The potential endogeneity deriving...

We exploit novel data from brain-training games to examine the impacts of air pollution on a comprehensive set of cognitive skills of adults. We find that exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5) impairs adult cognitive function, and that these effects are largest for those in prime working age....

We study long-run environmental impacts of trade liberalization on US manufacturing by exploiting a plausibly exogenous reduction in US trade policy uncertainty: the conferral of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to China. Using detailed data on establishment-level pollution emissions and...

Conventional wisdom suggests that marginal damages from particulate matter pollution are high in less-developed countries because they are highly polluted. Using administrative data on the universe of births and deaths, we explore birthweight and mortality effects of gestational particulate...

Plastic waste trade has grown considerably in the last decades and has caused severe environmental problems in recipient countries. As the largest recipient, China has permanently banned the imports of plastic waste since 2018. This paper examines the causal effect of plastic waste imports on...

We study how air pollution impacts the U.S. labor market by analyzing effects of drifting wildfire smoke that can affect populations far from the fires themselves. We link satellite smoke plume with labor market outcomes to estimate that an additional day of smoke exposure reduces quarterly...

This paper reviews and extends the recent empirical literature on the impact of climate change on mortality and adaptation in the United States. The analysis produces several new facts. First, the reductions in the impact of extreme heat on mortality risk previously documented up to 2004 have...

Recent research suggests that short-term exposure to air pollution is associated with an elevated prevalence of respiratory infectious disease. We examine the relationship between the air quality index (AQI) and weekly cases of influenza-like illnesses (ILI) and COVID-19 in the United States. We...