This paper presents a review of existing approaches to estimate the costs of inaction, as well as the benefits of policy action, for air pollution. It focuses primarily on health impacts from air pollution. The paper presents the “impact pathway approach”, which includes various steps in the...

The environmental system is characterized by an interplay of geophysical and geochemical processes that provide a setting for life. Now that human interventions are affecting the global system as a whole, it is important to distinguish between changes of natural origin and changes brought about...

This paper analyzes two indexes in order to capture the volatility inherent in El Niños Southern Oscillations (ENSO), develops the relationship between the strength of ENSO and greenhouse gas emissions, which increase as the economy grows, with carbon dioxide being the major greenhouse gas, and...

Migration and pollution are two defining features of China's impressive growth perfor- mance over the last 30 years. In this paper we study the migration response to pollution in Chinese cities, and its consequences for productivity and welfare. We document a robust pattern in which skilled...

This paper evaluates the effects of the lack of regulatory commitment on emission tax applied by the regulator, abatement effort made by the monopoly and social welfare comparing two alternative policy games. The first game assumes that the regulator commits to an ex-ante level of the emission...

This paper studies health effects from restricting the access of high-emission vehicles to innercities by implementing Low Emission Zones. For identification, we exploit variation in the timing and the spatial distribution of the introduction of new Low Emission Zones across cities in Germany....

Exploiting heterogeneity in U.S. firms' exposure to an unconventional monetary policy shock that reduced debt financing costs, I identify the impact of financing conditions on firms' toxic emissions. I find robust evidence that lower financing costs reduce toxic emissions and boost investments...

We examine day-to-day fluctuations in worker-level output over 15 months for a panel of 98 manufacturing workers at a plant located in an industrial city in Hebei province, north China. Long-term workers earn piece-rate wages, with no base pay or minimum pay, for homogeneous tasks performed over...

This paper presents a productivity growth measure that explicitly accounts for natural capital as an input factor and for undesirable goods, or “bads”, as an output of the production process. The discussion focuses on the extension of productivity measurement for bad outputs and estimates of...

Four decades of rapid economic expansion in China has generated enormous pressure on the environment, natural resources and public health. Alarming smog outbreaks during the 2010-13 period prompted the government to introduce a number of reforms to control air pollution, including a...