Moritz Lubczyk

Moritz Lubczyk, PhD Candidate from the University of Zurich will present his paper "The Causal Effects of Long-Term Exposure to Air Pollution: Evidence from Socialist East Germany".

Abstract:

This paper measures the causal effects of long-term exposure to air pollution on individuals. When the Soviet Union – main provider of fossil fuels to socialist East Germany after World War II – unexpectedly cut oil exports in 1982, East Germany had to rapidly substitute oil with highly-polluting lignite coal. We exploit the spatial distribution of lignite deposits within East Germany to show that the resulting increase in air pollution had large and persistent effects on individuals’ health and labor market outcomes over the four decades after the shock. We leverage authoritarian restrictions on the freedom of movement and the non-competitive housing and labor markets of the country’s command economy to identify long-term effects in an inverse movers design.