Topic:

When Externalities Collide: Influenza and Pollution

Time&Date: 

08:30-10:00, 2021/02/26 (Friday)

Speaker:

Prof. Matthew Neidell (Columbia University)

Influenza and air pollution are significant public health risks with large economic consequences shared across the globe. The common etiological pathways through which they harm health present an interesting case of compounding risk via interacting externalities. Using regional and temporal variation in pollution, combined with wind direction as an instrumental variable, we find exposure to more air pollution significantly increases influenza hospitalizations. By exploiting the random deviations in influenza vaccine effectiveness over time, we show high influenza vaccine effectiveness neutralizes this relationship. This suggests seemingly disparate policy actions of pollution control and expanded vaccination provide greater returns than found when studied in isolation.

Biography:

Prof. Matthew Neidell is an Economics Professor at Columbia University, where he holds faculty positions in the Mailman School of Public Health and The Earth Institute. He specializes in environmental, health, and labor economics, with research primarily focused at the intersections of these. His applies the latest empirical methods to examine the relationship between the environment and a wide range of measures of well-being, including worker productivity, human capital, and avoidance behavior. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) and the Developmental Core Chair of the Columbia Population Research Center.