Polluted Job Search: The Impact of Poor Air Quality on Reservation Wages (With Steffen Künn, Juan Palacios & Nico Pestel) Link - Under review
Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of air pollution on reservation wages. We use rich survey data on unemployed job seekers in Germany and exploit variation in individual exposure to fine particulate matter (PM10) based on the quasi-random allocation of interview slots to individuals. Our results show that an increase in PM10 by one standard deviation (corresponding to 12 μg/m3) reduces the reservation wage by approximately 1.2%. We further provide evidence that PM10 pollution decreases job seekers' search effort, risk tolerance and patience, which serve as potential mechanisms through which PM10 exposure negatively affects the reservation wage of unemployed job seekers.
Low Emission Zones and Job Search Outcomes (With Steffen Künn & Nico Pestel)
Abstract: This paper studies the impact of ambient air quality on job search outcomes of the unemployed. Reductions in air pollution may enhance job search outcomes through improved health and cognitive performance. Our identification strategy exploits the staggered implementation of Low Emission Zones (LEZs) in German cities as a source of exogenous variation in local air quality. We find that the introduction of LEZs has a marginally significant negative impact on unemployment duration and wages. We further show that LEZs had no effect on the local economy, supporting our hypothesis that the effect on job search outcomes is driven by changes in air quality and not due to confounding factors.
Growing Knowledge Disparities Among University Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' study performance in higher education using unique data on standardized progress tests throughout the curriculum of Dutch medical students. Applying a difference-in-differences approach and an event study analysis, we show a significant decline in student test scores during the pandemic, which is driven by a decrease in the percentage of answered test questions. This suggests that the pandemic has led to a slowdown in students' knowledge acquisition and academic progress.
Pollution and Learning: A Field Experiment in High Schools (With Nils Kok, Piet Eichholtz & Juan Palacios)
In June 2025, we successfully ran a pilot study. Currently, we are running the field study which runs from October 2025 to July 2026.
The impact of temperature and humidity on the learning progress of primary school kids: the protecting role of buildings (With Elke Claes)
Abstract: Indoor environmental conditions are increasingly recognized as important factors for performance and productivity. Since students spend most of their time indoors, it is valuable to understand how classroom conditions affect their performance. This paper examines the impact of indoor dry-and wet-bulb temperature on student performance. Unlike dry-bulb temperature, wet-bulb temperature incorporates both heat and humidity, providing a more accurate measure of heat stress experienced by students than air temperature alone. We use data from a large field study that monitored environmental conditions in 216 Dutch primary school classrooms from 2018 to 2021. We combine this sensor data with biannual math and reading scores obtained from the student administration systems. Applying a fixed-effects strategy, we exploit within classroom variations in temperature and humidity across different tests. Our results show that indoor dry-bulb temperatures negatively affect student performance. These effects are amplified by humidity, with different patterns for math and reading. Further, we find that indoor wet-bulb temperatures negatively affect students’ math performance, but not their reading performance. Our findings indicate that thermal classroom conditions matter for student performance. This underscores the need to monitor and manage both indoor temperature and humidity to create supportive learning environments for students.
Pollution at Work: Air Quality and On-the-Job Accidents (With Juan Palacios, Sefi Roth and Nikodem Szumilo)
Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of air pollution on workplace accidents, providing new evidence on an important but under-studied channel through which environmental conditions affect welfare. We combine detailed administrative data on occupational injuries with high-resolution ambient air quality measures for the contiguous United States. To identify the causal effect of pollution on workplace safety, we estimate models with fixed effects and instrument for local air pollution using plausibly exogenous variation generated by daily wind direction. We find that air pollution significantly increases workplace accident risk. Specifically, our preferred estimates indicate that a one-standard deviation increase in the Air Quality Index raises workplace accidents by 8.14 percent. Higher pollution also increases accident severity, including fatalities and injuries involving days away from work and job transfers, with these effects concentrated on days with the highest pollution levels. Our results underscore a substantial hidden cost of air pollution and highlight workplace safety as an additional and economically meaningful benefit of improved air quality.