This paper addresses the trade-off between unfavourable air pollution levels and favourable weather conditions for selecting a date for the staging of an outdoor event. For an event date that has been fixed, it presents a personal preference-based data-driven decision framework for individual...

We consider health and environmental quality in developing countries, where limited resources constrain behaviors that combat enormously burdensome health challenges. We focus on four huge challenges that are preventable (i.e., are resolved in rich countries). We distinguish them as special...

Despite evidence showing that early life environments influence adult outcomes, there is no evidence that early life circumstances could cause addiction. Studying the long-term effects of a severe food shortage in Iran, caused by WWII, on people born between September 1941 and 1943, we find that...

We exploit the introduction of electronic toll collection, (E-ZPass), which greatly reduced both traffic congestion and vehicle emissions near highway toll plazas. We show that the introduction of E-ZPass reduced prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2 kilometers (km) of a toll...

Lead is a neurotoxin with developmentally harmful effects in children. In the United States, over half of the current flow of lead into the atmosphere is attributable to lead-formulated aviation gasoline (avgas), used in a large fraction of piston-engine aircraft. Deposition of lead from avgas...

This paper reexamines empirical evidence on the effectiveness of environmental regulations in India from a recent study by Greenstone and Hanna (GH, 2014). GH report that air pollution control policies in India were effective in improving air quality but had a modest and statistically...

Using the most comprehensive developing country dataset ever compiled on air and water pollution and environmental regulations, the paper assesses India's environmental regulations with a difference-in-differences design. The air pollution regulations are associated with substantial improvements...

Economists long have argued that the severe sex imbalance that exists in many developing countries is caused by underlying economic conditions. This paper uses plausibly exogenous increases in sex-specific agricultural income caused by post-Mao reforms in China to estimate the effects of total...