PUBLISHED & ACCEPTED PAPERS
“The Social Lifecycle Impacts of Power Plant Siting in the Historical United States,” joint with Karen Clay, Danae Hernandez-Cortes, Akshaya Jha, Joshua Lewis, and Noah Miller, Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy, forthcoming (NBER Working Paper No. 34109, IZA Discussion Paper No. 18052).
“HIStory of LAND Transformation by Humans in South America (HISLAND-SA): Annual and 1-km Crop-Specific Gridded Data (1950–2020),” joint with Xu Binyuan, Hanqin Tian, Shufen Pan, et al., Earth System Science Data, forthcoming.
“Carbon Rollercoaster: A Historical Analysis of Decarbonization in the United States," joint with Karen Clay, Akshaya Jha, and Joshua Lewis, Journal of Economic Perspectives 39(3): 171-192, 2025 (NBER Working Paper No. 33983, IZA Discussion Paper No. 18008).
“Measuring Criticism of the Police in Local News Media Using Large Language Models,” joint with Logan Crowl, Sujan Duttac, Ashiqur R. KhudaBukhsh, and Daniel Nagin, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122(9): e2418821122, 2025.
“Air Pollution and Adult Cognition: Evidence from Brain Training,” joint with Andrea La Nauze, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 12(1): 221-255, 2025 (NBER Working Paper No. 28785, IZA Discussion Paper No. 14353).
“Unmasking the Role of Remote Sensors in Comfort, Energy and Demand Response,” joint with Ozan Baris Mulayim and Mario Bergés, Data-Centric Engineering 5: e28, 2024.
“The Impact of Lead Exposure on Fertility, Infant Mortality, and Infant Birth Outcomes,” joint with Karen Clay and Alex Hollingsworth, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 18(2): 301-320, 2024 (NBER Working Paper No. 31379, IZA Discussion Paper No. 16236).
“The Historical Impact of Coal on Cities,” joint with Karen Clay and Joshua Lewis, Regional Science and Urban Economics 107, 103951, 2024 -- Special Issue on Urban Economics and the Environment (NBER Working Paper No. 31365, IZA Discussion Paper No. 16229).
“Bridging the Gap: Mismatch Effects and Catch-Up Dynamics Under a Brazilian College Affirmative Action Program,” joint with Rodrigo Oliveira and Alei Santos, Economics of Education Review 98, 102501, 2024 (NBER Working Paper No. 31403, IZA Discussion Paper No. 16239, UNU-WIDER Working Paper 2022/31, previously circulated as Affirmative Action With No Major Switching: Evidence from a Top University in Brazil).
“The Value of Health Insurance during a Crisis: Effects of Medicaid Implementation on Pandemic Influenza Mortality”, joint with Karen Clay, Joshua Lewis, and Xiao Wang, Review of Economics and Statistics 106(5): 1393-1402, 2024 (NBER Working Paper No. 27120, IZA Discussion Paper No. 13200).
“Canary in a Coal Mine: Infant Mortality and Tradeoffs Associated with Mid-20th Century Air Pollution”, joint with Karen Clay and Joshua Lewis, Review of Economics and Statistics 106(3): 698-711, 2024 (NBER Working Paper No. 22155, IZA Discussion Paper No. 9884).
“Does LEED Certification Save Energy? Evidence from Federal Buildings”, joint with Karen Clay and Xiaochen Sun, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 121: 102866, 2023 (NBER Working Paper No. 28612, IZA Discussion Paper No. 14211).
“A Unifying Approach to Measuring Climate Impacts and Adaptation”, joint with Antonio Bento, Noah Miller, and Mehreen Mookerjee, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 121: 102843, 2023 (NBER Working Paper No. 27247, IZA Discussion Paper No. 13290).
"Incidental Adaptation: The Role of Non-Climate Regulations", joint with Antonio Bento, Noah Miller, and Mehreen Mookerjee, Environmental and Resource Economics (Lead Article) 86(3): 305-343, 2023 (NBER Working Paper No. 28783, IZA Discussion Paper No. 14355, previously circulated as Time is of the Essence: Climate Adaptation Induced by Non-Climate Existing Institutions). Winner of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE) Award for Outstanding Publication in 2023.
“Timing Matters: Shifting Economic Activity and Intra-day Variation in Ambient Ozone Concentrations,” joint with David Adler, Journal of Public Economics 223: 104905, 2023 (NBER Working Paper No. 31069, IZA Discussion Paper No. 13428).
“The Power of Hydroelectric Dams: Historical Evidence from the United States over the 20th Century”, Economic Journal 133(649): 420-459, 2023 (IZA Discussion Paper No. 8082).
“Assortative Matching or Exclusionary Hiring? The Impact of Firm Policies on Racial Wage Differences in Brazil,” joint with François Gerard, Lorenzo Lagos, and David Card, American Economic Review 111(10): 3418-57, 2021 (NBER Working Paper No. 25176, IZA Discussion Paper No. 11923).
“Toxic Truth: Lead and Fertility”, joint with Karen Clay and Margarita Portnykh, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 8(5): 975-1012, 2021 (NBER Working Paper No. 24607, IZA Discussion Paper No. 11541).
“Climate-Induced Tradeoffs in Planning and Operating Costs of a Regional Electricity System”, joint with Francisco Fonseca, Michael Craig, Paulina Jaramillo, Mario Berges, et al., Environmental Science & Technology 55(16): 11204-11215, 2021.
““Placebo Tests” for the Impacts of Air Pollution on Health: The Challenge of Limited Healthcare Infrastructure”, joint with Bruna Guidetti and Paula Pereda, AEA Papers and Proceedings 111: 371-375, 2021 (IZA Discussion Paper No. 14080).
“Effects of Climate Change on Capacity Expansion Decisions of an Electricity Generation Fleet in the Southeast U.S.”, joint with Francisco Fonseca, Michael Craig, Paulina Jaramillo, Mario Berges, et al., Environmental Science & Technology 55(4): 2522-2531, 2021.
“Using Machine Learning to Predict Retrofit Effects for a Commercial Building Portfolio”, joint with Yujie Xu and Vivian Loftness, Energies 2021, 14, 4334.
“Short- and Long-Run Impacts of Rural Electrification: Evidence from the Rollout of the U.S. Power Grid”, joint with Joshua Lewis, Journal of Development Economics 143 (2020): 102412 (IZA Discussion Paper No. 11243).
“Considering the Nuclear Option: Hidden Benefits and Internalized Social Costs of Nuclear Power in the U.S. Since 1970”, joint with David Adler and Akshaya Jha, Resource and Energy Economics 59 (2020): 101127.
“What Explains Cross-City Variation in Mortality during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic? Evidence from 440 U.S. Cities”, joint with Karen Clay and Joshua Lewis, Economics & Human Biology 35 (2019): 42-50 (IZA Discussion Paper No. 12177).
“Seasonal Effects of Climate Change on Intra-day Electricity Demand Patterns”, joint with Francisco Fonseca, Paulina Jaramillo, and Mario Berges, Climatic Change 154(3-4): 435-451, 2019.
“The Legacy Lead Deposition in Soils and Its Impact on Cognitive Function in Preschool-Aged Children in the United States”, joint with Karen Clay and Margarita Portnykh, Economics & Human Biology 33 (2019): 181-192 (IZA Discussion Paper No. 12178).
“The Unintended Impact of Ecosystem Preservation on Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Evidence from Environmental Constraints on Hydropower Development in the United States”, PLoS ONE 14(1): e0210483, 2019.
“Pollution, Infectious Disease, and Mortality: Evidence from the 1918-1919 Spanish Influenza Pandemic”, joint with Karen Clay and Joshua Lewis, Journal of Economic History 78(4): 1179-1209, December 2018 (NBER Working Paper No. 21635, IZA Discussion Paper No. 9399).
“‘Ticking Bomb’: The Impact of Climate Change on the Incidence of Lyme Disease”, joint with Igor Dumic, Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology, Article 5719081 (2018) (Special Issue on Climate Change Connected to Infectious Human Diseases).
“A Retrospective Analysis of the Market Price Response to Distributed Photovoltaic Generation in California”, joint with Michael T. Craig, Paulina Jaramillo, Bri-Mathias Hodge, and Nathaniel J. Williams, Energy Policy 121 (2018): 394-403.
“The Local Socio-Economic Impacts of Large Hydropower Plant Development in a Developing Country”, joint with Felipe de Faria, Alex Davis, and Paulina Jaramillo, Energy Economics 67 (2017): 533-544.
“Impacts of Nuclear Plant Shutdown on Coal-fired Power Generation and Infant Health in the Tennessee Valley in the 1980s”, Nature Energy 2, 17051 (2017).
WORKING PAPERS
“Impacts of the Clean Air Act on the Power Sector from 1938-1994: Anticipation and Adaptation,” joint with Karen Clay, Akshaya Jha, and Joshua Lewis, (NBER Working Paper No. 28962, IZA Discussion Paper No. 14494).
This study leverages newly digitized data on virtually every fossil-fuel power plant in the United States from 1938-1994 to provide the first assessment of the impacts of the 1970 Clean Air Act (CAA) that accounts for anticipation. The extended pre-regulation benchmark allows us to account for anticipatory behavior by electric utilities in the years leading up to the Act’s passage. Guided by predictions from a simple theoretical framework, we use a difference-in-differences approach to examine the impacts of the Act’s nonattainment designations on coal-fired power plants of different vintages. We find that nonattainment designation led to large and persistent decreases in plant productivity, which would be substantially underestimated without data from well before the passage of the 1970 CAA. The productivity losses were concentrated only among plants built before 1963. This timing aligns with the passage of the original 1963 CAA, which served as a signal of impending federal regulation. We provide empirical and historical evidence of anticipatory responses by utilities in the design and siting of plants that opened after 1963. Finally, we find that the aggregate productivity losses of the CAA borne by the power sector were substantially mitigated by the reallocation of output away from older less productive power plants.
“Health Shocks under Hospital Capacity Constraint:Evidence from Air Pollution in Sao Paulo, Brazil,” joint with Bruna Guidetti, and Paula Pereda, R&R at Journal of Public Economics (NBER Working Paper No. 32224, IZA Discussion Paper No. 13211).
When a health shock hits a location, the healthcare infrastructure needs to be adjusted to meet the increased demand. This may be a challenge in developing countries because of limited hospital capacity. In this study, we examine the consequences of health shocks induced by air pollution in a large metropolitan area in the developing world: Sao Paulo, Brazil. Using daily data from 2015-2017, and an instrumental variable approach based on wind speed, we provide evidence that exposure to particulate matter (PM10) causes an increase in pediatric hospitalizations for respiratory diseases, which in turn leads to a decrease in hospital admissions for elective and non-urgent care such as phimosis surgery and video-EEG (electroencephalograph) monitoring. Importantly, emergency procedures such as appendectomy and bone fracture repair are not affected. While strained Sao Paulo hospitals seem to absorb the increased demand induced by poor air quality, our results imply that the common practice of using health outcomes unrelated to pollution as “placebo tests” in studies on the effects of air pollution might be inadequate in settings with limited healthcare infrastructure. This is often the case in developing countries, where severe pollution is also ubiquitous, but also happens in deprived areas in the developed world.
“The Hidden Toll of Airborne Lead: Infant Mortality Impacts of Industrial Lead Pollution,” joint with Karen Clay and Xiao Wang, NBER Working Paper No. 33447.
This paper uses U.S. Toxic Release Inventory data on air lead emissions to provide IV estimates of the effects of air lead concentration on infant mortality. The causal effect of lead on infant mortality is identified by annual variation in air fugitive lead emissions interacted with wind speed near reporting plants, which together determine local ambient lead concentration. Unlike stack emissions, which occur routinely and may prompt avoidance behavior, fugitive emissions are intermittent and influenced by both historical and current factors, such as wind speed variation, making them difficult to avoid. The paper has two main findings. First, higher air lead concentration causes higher infant mortality in the first month and in the first year, suggesting that both in utero and environmental exposures matter. Second, higher lead concentration increases deaths from low birthweight, sudden unexplained infant death (SUID), and respiratory and nervous system causes, which is consistent with findings from animal studies, even when accounting for behavioral responses. Back of the envelope calculations indicate that declines in fugitive lead emissions prevented 34-59 infant deaths per year, generating benefits of $380-$670 million annually in 2023 dollars.
"Carbon Taxation and Firm Behaviour in Emerging Economies: Evidence from South Africa," joint with Johannes Gallé, Rodrigo Oliveira, Daniel Overbeck, and Nadine Riedel, UNU-WIDER Working Paper No. 33/2025.
This paper provides the first comprehensive analysis of how firms in emerging economies respond to carbon taxation, leveraging detailed administrative data from South Africa—a potential trailblazer for other developing countries with limited state capacity amid the growing global push for carbon pricing. We examine the dynamic impacts of the carbon tax on firm-level outcomes—such as profits, sales, capital, and labour inputs—across manufacturing and mining firms, which are key sectors in the context of the carbon tax. Contrary to concerns that carbon taxes may hinder economic growth or reduce employment, our findings show no evidence of negative average impacts on firm performance or jobs. However, this overall result masks significant heterogeneity in the tax’s effects across sectors, driven by the sector-specific design elements of the South African carbon tax. Firms expecting higher effective tax rates may have intensified their use of emission-intensive machinery and depreciated capital in anticipation of the tax. This behaviour appears to stem from firms resolving regulatory uncertainty or seeking to recover costs from stranded assets.
"Weathering Challenges: Distributional Impacts of Climatic Shocks on Household Consumption in Mozambique," joint with Patricia Justino, Gabriel Monteiro, and Rodrigo Oliveira, UNU-WIDER Working Paper No. 3/2025.
Mozambique is highly vulnerable to climate change. It faces frequent cyclones, floods, and droughts while having limited revenue collection capacity and social protection programmes. This paper assesses the distributional effects of climate shocks on household consumption and explores adaptation strategies using consumption survey data from 2008 to 2022, combined with district-level climate data. We find that extreme rainfall and dryness shocks during the growing season significantly reduce household expenses for essential goods, with impacts most pronounced at the bottom to the middle of the consumption distribution. However, we found that the consumption of self-produced goods mitigates the expense losses. Our findings suggest that the main social protection programme in the country, PSSB, also helps mitigate these negative effects. We do not find evidence that domestic family transfer and international remittances cushion consumption losses because of climate shocks. This study underscores the importance of developing targeted policies to protect households in vulnerable regions as climate risks intensify.
“Climate Change Will Unravel Air Quality Regulations,” joint with David Adler, Antonio Bento, and Noah Miller.
Using daily data for the United States over the period 1980-2019, we estimate the impacts of temperature on ambient ozone concentrations, accounting for adaptation to climatic change. We find that even with adaptation, rises in temperature will steeply increase ozone levels by over 9 ppb on days above 25C. By mid-century, we calculate that 189 additional counties will be violating the air quality standards, with 33 million more residents exposed to unhealthy levels of ozone. Climate change will thus put the ambient ozone standards at risk as the costs of compliance with existing standards will likely increase. In light of a recent EPA ruling that would effectively remove co-benefits from ozone precursor reductions from the cost-benefit analysis of those standards, they will be in peril.
WORK IN PROGRESS
“Price Stabilization Policy, Gasoline Consumption, and Health Externality: Evidence from Brazil,” joint with Andre Ribeiro.
“Impact of a Cap-and-Trade Program on Local Air Pollution: Evidence from the Acid Rain Program,” joint with Karen Clay and Xiaochen Sun.
“Credit Access and the Energy Transition: Insights from the Shift in Home Heating from Coal to Natural Gas and Electricity,” with Daniel Aaronson, Karen Clay, Daniel Hartley, and Bhashkar Mazumder.
“The Economics of Local Air Quality Alerts,” joint with David Adler and Sarah Taylor.
“Industrial Activity and Land Degradation: Evidence from Slaughterhouse Openings in Brazil,” joint with Daniel Da Mata and Mario Dotta.
“Impacts of Weakening Anti-Environmental Policy: Evidence from Vehicle Ownership Tax in Brazil,” joint with Gabriel Monteiro.
“The Role of Firms on the Racial Wage Gap in the United States,” joint with Lorenzo Lagos and Giovanni Righi.
“Impacts of Affirmative Action in Higher Education on Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Brazil,” joint with Rodrigo Oliveira.