Children exposed to pollutants like lead are more disruptive and have lower achievement. However, little is known about whether lead-exposed children affect the long-run outcomes of their peers. We estimate these spillover effects using new data on preschool blood lead levels (BLLs) matched to...

Although pollution is widespread, there is little evidence about how it might harm children's long run outcomes. Using the detailed, geocoded data that follows national representative cohorts of children born to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth respondents over time, I compare siblings...

We examine the effect of school traffic pollution on student outcomes by leveraging variation in wind patterns for schools the same distance from major highways. We compare within-student achievement for students transitioning between schools near highways, where one school has had greater...

We use linked birth and education records for all children born in Florida between 1992 and 2002 to assess the effects of neonatal health on the identification of childhood disabilities. We find that several measures of neonatal health are associated with disability incidence, although...

We use linked birth and education records from Florida to investigate how the identification of childhood disabilities varies by race and school racial composition. Using a series of decompositions, we find that black and Hispanic students are identified with disabilities at lower rates than are...

Recent empirical research shows that air pollution harms student test scores and attendance and increases office discipline referrals. However, the mechanism by which air pollution operates within schools to negatively affect student and teacher outcomes remains largely opaque. The existing...

We conduct the first-ever large-scale study of the relationship between air pollution and suicide using detailed cause of death data from all death certificates in the U.S. between 2003 and 2010. Using wind direction as an instrument for daily pollution exposure, we find that a 1 μg/m3 increase...

Between 2000 and 2008, access to high-speed, broadband internet grew significantly in the United States, but there is debate on whether access to high-speed internet improves or harms wellbeing. We find that a ten percent increase in the proportion of county residents with access to broadband...

We estimate the impacts of temperature on alleged and substantiated child maltreatment among young children using administrative data from state child protective service agencies. Leveraging short-term weather variation, we find increases in maltreatment of young children during hot periods. We...

Collective reputation implies an important externality. Among firms trading internationally, quality shocks about one firm's products could affect the demand of other firms from the same origin country. We study this issue in the context of a large-scale scandal that affected the Chinese dairy...