In cities around the world, Covid-19 lockdowns have improved outdoor air quality, in some cases dramatically. Even if only temporary, these improvements could have longer-lasting effects on policy by making chronic air pollution more salient and boosting political pressure for change. To that...

Many studies have revealed the negative effects of air pollution on respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, pregnancy outcomes, and neurocognitive diseases. In developing countries, notably in South Asia, both ambient air pollution (AAP) and household air pollution (HAP) cost millions of...

In light of the low public awareness of ozone pollution and the potential health threats posed by long-term ozone exposure, this study estimates the causal effect of long-term ozone exposure on respiratory mortality. By employing an instrumental variable based on the long-distance transmission...

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...

In evaluating the appropriate response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a key parameter is the rate of substitution between mortality risk and wealth or income, conventionally summarized as the value per statistical life (VSL). For the United States, VSL is estimated as approximately $10 million, which...

This survey presents the recent and rapidly expanding literature, which analyses the economic impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic, by means of Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modelling. It does so not only by contrasting and assessing the different methodological approaches, and the key...

The COVID-19 virus, also known as the coronavirus, is currently spreading around the world. While a growing literature suggests that exposure to pollution can cause respiratory illness and increase deaths among the elderly, little is known about whether increases in pollution could cause...

This paper presents empirical results on coronavirus fatality rates from cross-country regressions for OECD countries. We include medical, environmental and policy variables in our analysis to explain the death rates when holding case rates constant. We find that the share of the aged...

The COVID-19 virus, also known as the coronavirus, is currently spreading around the world. While a growing literature suggests that exposure to pollution can cause respiratory illness and increase deaths among the elderly, little is known about whether increases in pollution could cause...

We examine the relationship between contemporaneous fine particulate matter exposure and COVID-19 morbidity and mortality using an instrumental variable approach based on wind direction. Harnessing daily changes in county-level wind direction, we show that arguably exogenous fluctuations in...