Research

Publications:

The Effects of Air Pollution on Students' Cognitive Performance: Evidence from Brazilian University Entrance Tests (with Matthew Cole and Eric Strobl), 2021, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 8, n.6, November, p. 1051-1077.

We examine the contemporaneous causal relationship between outdoor air pollution levels and student cognitive performance in Brazil’s nationwide university entrance examinations. Our analysis relies upon a unique and previously unexplored student level data set allowing us to examine the effect of particulate matter (PM10) on students’ scores. In our main specification we construct an individual level panel data for the two days of exams across three years and apply student fixed effects to address potential endogeneity concerns. In addition, we take advantage of plausibly exogenous spatial and temporal variation in PM10 across municipalities in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Sāo Paulo and utilise an instrumental variable approach based on wind direction. Our results suggest that air pollution negatively impacts the cognitive performance of students. We find suggestive evidence that boys may be more affected than girls, and less well-off exam takers at the bottom of the score distribution are more affected than their more privileged counterparts. 

Attention Score: In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric. Paper cited by several important peer reviewed works, including National Bureau of Economic Research NBER, Nature Sustainability, several media outlets and Twitter.

Paper made free access and summarised by the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists

Working papers and work in progress:

Agricultural Fires and Cognitive Performance (with Matthew Cole and Eric Strobl) - Forthcoming at: Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics

This paper examines the impact of foetal exposure to air pollution from agricultural fires on Brazilian students' cognitive performance later in life. We rely on comparisons across children who were upwind and downwind of the fires while in utero to address concerns around sorting and temporary income shocks. Our findings show that agricultural fires increase PM2.5, resulting in significant negative effects on pupils' scores in Portuguese and Maths in the fifth grade through prenatal exposure. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that a 1% reduction in PM2.5 from agricultural burning has the potential to increase later life wages by 2.6%. 

Health Shocks and Human Capital in Brazil (with Martin Koppensteiner and Lívia Menezes) - First draft coming soon

Temperature and Infant Health (with Martink Koppensteiner and Livia Menezes)

The impact of clean air zones on air pollution, health and human capital (with Jonathan James)