The Evolving Distribution of Relative Humidity Conditional upon Daily Maximum Temperature in a Warming Climate

The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 495 citations

• Political Science
• Economics
• Econometrics

Using 40 countries’ subnational data, we estimate age-specific mortality-temperature relationships and extrapolate them to countries without data today and into a future with climate change. We uncover a U-shaped relationship where extre6me cold and hot temperatures increase mortality rates, especially for the elderly. Critically, this relationship is flattened by higher incomes and adaptation to local climate. Using a revealed-preference approach to recover unobserved adaptation costs, we estimate that the mean global increase in mortality risk due to climate change, accounting for adaptation benefits and costs, is valued at roughly 3.2% of global GDP in 2100 under a high-emissions scenario. Notably, today’s cold locations are projected to benefit, while today’s poor and hot locations have large projected damages. Finally, our central estimates indicate that the release of an additional ton of CO2 today will cause mortality-related damages of $36.6 under a high-emissions scenario, with an interquartile range accounting for both econometric and climate uncertainty of [−$7.8, $73.0]. These empirically grounded estimates exceed the previous literature’s estimates by an order of magnitude.

Technology and Audit Interventions to Combat Theft in Pakistan's Power Sector

AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2026-02-25

Technology and Audit Interventions to Combat Theft in Pakistan's Power Sector

AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2026-02-25

An Economic Perspective on the EPA’s Clean Power Plan — Cross-State Coordination Key to Cost-Effective CO₂ Reductions

WORLD SCIENTIFIC eBooks · 2025-05-01

Can Pollution Market Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India

SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation

Nature · 2025-06-18 · 201 citations

Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India

The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2025-02-03 · 11 citations

Abstract Market-based environmental regulations are seldom used in low-income countries, where pollution is highest but state capacity is often low. We collaborated with the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) to design and experimentally evaluate the world’s first particulate-matter emissions market, which covered industrial plants in a large Indian city. There are three main findings. First, the market functioned well. Treatment plants, randomly assigned to the emissions market, traded permits to become significant net sellers or buyers. After trading, treatment plants held enough permits to cover their emissions 99% of the time, compared with just 66% compliance with standards under the command-and-control status quo. Second, treatment plants reduced pollution emissions, relative to control plants, by 20%–30%. Third, the market reduced abatement costs by an estimated 11%, holding constant emissions. This cost-savings estimate is based on plant-specific marginal cost curves that we estimate from the universe of bids to buy and sell permits in the market. The combination of pollution reductions and low costs imply that the emissions market has mortality benefits that exceed its costs by at least 25 times.

SLIIDERS: Sea Level Impacts Input Dataset by Elevation, Region, and Scenario

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2024-03-04

This record includes the Sea Level Impacts Input Dataset by Elevation, Region, and Scenario (SLIIDERS) dataset. It also includes source code to generate this product as well as necessary inputs that are not available for download elsewhere. Both the dataset and the source code are consistent with version 1.2. Note: The version associated with Depsky et al., 2023 is v1.1. The zipped SLIIDERS Zarr store can be downloaded and accessed locally or can be directly accessed via code similar to the following: from fsspec.implementations.zip import ZipFileSystem import xarray as xr xr.open_zarr(ZipFileSystem(url_of_file_in_record}}).get_mapper()) File Inventory Products sliiders-v1.2.zarr.zip: SLIIDERS. A global dataset containing 18 socioeconomic variables, reflecting present day socioeconomic and geophysical characteristics of 11,980 coastal regions and projecting capital stock, GDP, and population growth trajectories through 2100 for five SSPs and two economic growth models. These variables are used as inputs to the pyCIAM modeling platform detailed in Depsky et al. 2023. sliiders-v1.2.nc: Same as the original SLIIDERS dataset, but in netcdf format. Inputs All provided inputs are manually created or adjusted points used to create the coastline segments of SLIIDERS: ciam_segment_pts_manual_adds.parquet: A list of segment points manually added to those that come from the extreme sea level model CoDEC (Muis et al. 2020) gtsm_stations_ciam_ne_coastline_snapped.parquet: Stations from CoDEC snapped to coastlines from Natural Earth gtsm_stations_eur_tothin.parquet: A list of European points in CoDEC to thin. CoDEC provides ~10km resolution in Europe and ~50km elsewhere. For consistency, SLIIDERS uses ~50km spacing for its coastal segments globally. Source Code sliiders-1.2.zip: The source code used to generate SLIIDERS v1.1. See READMEs within this code for more details. This is consistent with release v1.2 of the code maintained on github at https://github.com/ClimateImpactLab/SLIIDERS

Nonrepresentativeness in Population Health Research: Evidence from a COVID-19 Antibody Study

American Economic Review Insights · 2024-08-30

We analyze representativeness in a COVID-19 serological study with randomized participation incentives. We find large participation gaps by race and income when incentives are lower. High incentives increase participation rates for all groups but increase them more among under-represented groups. High incentives restore representativeness on race and income and also on health variables likely to be correlated with seropositivity, such as the uninsured rate, hospitalization rates, and an aggregate COVID-19 risk index. (JEL C83, I11, I14, J15)

Data and Code for: The Economics of the Global Energy Challenge

ICPSR Data Holdings · 2024-01-01

This lecture argues that, rather than facing an isolated climatechange challenge, the world must confront the Global EnergyChallenge (GEC) that requires all countries to make trade-offsbetween three often competing and interrelated goals: inexpensiveand reliable energy, clean air, and limiting damages fromclimate change. I present seven facts that help illuminate the contoursof the GEC and the interactions between the three goals.Finally, it concludes by outlining potential solutions: pricing energyat its full social cost, investing in technical and policy innovation,improving information on pollution and climate damages,and treating energy as a private good.