Pollution

Waiting for my Sentence: Air Pollution and the Productivity of Court Rulings

Luis Sarmiento

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Abstract

I assert that air pollution in the form of nitrogen oxides affects the cognitive productivity of lawyers, judges, and prosecutors participating in Mexican court hearings. This is the first article to document an effect of nitrogen oxides on labor productivity, and the first to study the effect of pollution on judicial employees. I analyze the connection between both variables by merging hourly pollution measures with granular hearing data under the assumption that the length of the hearing approximates the productivity of partaking workers. The study uses panel and instrumental variable techniques to identify the causal relationship between both variables. In the preferred specification, one standard deviation increase of nitrogen oxides increases the length of judicial hearings by 3.68 percent.

Pollution and Discharge Times for Respiratory Emergency Room Visits

Luis Sarmiento

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Abstract

This article looks at the effect of six different criteria pollutants and their associated pollution index on the discharge times of respiratory emergency room visits in Mexico City. The analysis is the first to look at the impact of criteria pollutants on the length it takes for patients with respiratory conditions to be cleared out from emergency room status. I infer causality with the use of spatial and temporal panel techniques that control for a broad set of relevant variables and use fixed effects to control for unobservable time consistent and seasonal covariates. In the preferred multipollutant specification, one standard deviation increase in the pollution index, carbon monoxide, fine particle matter, and ozone, leads to increments of 28.1, 22.3, 17.7, and 25.9, percent in the discharge time of respiratory emergency room cases in the city. These results show that environmental policies to reduce pollution can decrease treatment times at emergency rooms, reducing opportunity costs on patients and allowing for a reallocation of resources from pollution triggered to pollution unrelated conditions.

Make Sure the Kids are OK: Indirect Effects of Ground-Level Ozone on Well-Being

Luis Sarmiento, Aleksandar Zaklan, and Julia Rechliz

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Abstract

We posit that pollution affects welfare outcomes directly, through a person’s health, and indirectly, through the health of her children. This paper is the first to consider the indirect channel to welfare losses from pollution. We analyze the effect of ozone on subjective health and life satisfaction using a panel of German individuals matched with highly granular pollution data. We find that individuals with children in their households suffer losses in life satisfaction due to ozone, while those without children do not. Ozone does not affect the health satisfaction of either group. We provide evidence on the mechanism of the life satisfaction effect by showing that ozone leads to losses in workdays to care for a sick child.

  • Submission Status: Submitted.

Conferences

  • 2018 Essen-Duisburg conference on health economics; Essen, Ger
  • 2018 LACEA-LAMES conference; Guayaquil, Ecu.
  • 2019 EARE; Manchester, U.K.

I am Innocent: The Effect of Urban Pollution on Crime Behavior

Luis Sarmiento

Expected working paper by October 2019

Abstract

I posit that the hourly variation of air pollution affects the probability of crime. To understand the connection between hourly changes in pollution and crime, I use administrative crime records from Los Angeles and New York police departments alongside monitoring stations data from the environmental protection agency. I infer causality through the use of ordinary least squares, Poisson, and probit fixed-effect models controlling for the census tract where the crime occurs, the hour, the month, and the year of the crime plus additional control covariates at the crime, tract, and city levels. Preliminary results point towards a large effect of ozone, fine particle matter, and carbon monoxide on criminality..

  • Submission Status: Working paper expected by October 2019.

Conferences