1,720,967 research outputs found
Three Essays on Climate Change and Air Pollution
Get PDFIn my dissertation, I have studied the link between the Earth’s changing climate
and air pollution. As we know, air pollution is an externality of any major industrial
activity, day to day vehicle use, electricity generation etc. I establish
the fact that rapidly changing temperature and rainfall patterns exacerbate the
levels of multiple air pollutants, thus entailing larger social costs of the above
mentioned activities. From a policy perspective, such estimates are crucial to
reach the socially desirable level of emissions and technically, this exogenous
causal link from climate change to pollutant formation can be used to get more
precise estimates of the health consequences of air pollution.
In the first chapter, I analyze the impact of climate change on particulate air
pollution, which has the most sever health consequences. Using daily weather
data, daily data on PM10 from 1990-2013 and daily data on PM2.5 from 1997-2013,
I find the first causal estimates of the level of precipitation as well as the precipitation
frequency on particulate matter concentrations in ambient air. Using my
findings, I exploit exogenous rainfall variation in an instrumental variables approach
to also estimate the effect of increases in ambient particulate matter on
the number of infant deaths. My estimates suggest that a 1 ug/m3 decrease in
ambient PM10 concentrations would imply almost 27 fewer infant deaths per
100,000 live births.
In my second chapter, we propose a novel approach to estimate adaptation
to climate change based on a decomposition of meteorological variables into
long-run trends and deviations from those trends (weather shocks). Our estimating
equation simultaneously exploits weather variation to identify the impact
of weather shocks, and climatic variation to identify the effect of longer-run
observed changes. We then compare the short- and long-run effects to provide
a measure of adaptation. We apply our methodology to study the impact of climate
change on air quality and estimate the so-called climate penalty on ozone.
We have three main findings. First, a temperature shock of 1 degree C increases ozone
levels by 1.7 ppb on average. A change of similar magnitude in a 30-year moving
average increases ozone concentration by 1.2 ppb. Second, we find evidence
of adaptive behavior. For a change of 1 degree C in temperature, our measure of adaptation
in terms of ozone concentration is 0.45 ppb. If adaptive responses are
not taken into account, the climate penalty on ozone would be overestimated
by approximately 17 percent. Third, adaptation in counties with levels of ozone
above the EPA’s standards appears to be over 66 percent larger than adaptation
in counties in “attainment”. This difference is what we call regulation-induced
adaptation. The remainder is our measure of residual adaptation.
In the final chapter, we present a theoretical model that looks at a federal
air pollution regulation and tries to analyze the variablity in attainment and
non attainment designations of counties. Since many areas in the United States
have been in non-attainment for prolonged periods, we argue that it must be
an optimal choice for the counties, driven by parameters among which climate
change is a major one. We find that counties having mild enough climate can
actually choose to be in non-attainment, even after paying the penalties imposed
by the regulation
Does rain wash out particulate matter? An application to the effect of air pollution on infant mortality
Get PDFThis paper analyzes the impact of climate change on particulate air pollution and applies this exogenous causal effect to study the effect of air pollution on infant health. Using daily weather data, daily data on PM10 from 1990-2013 and daily data on PM2:5 from 1997-2013, I find the first causal estimates of the level of precipitation as well as the precipitation frequency on particulate matter concentrations in ambient air. I utilize information on Clean Air Act Nonattainment designations, to estimate differential impacts of lesser and infrequent precipitation on air pollution in non-attainment counties vs counties compliant with the federal regulations. I find that lower as well as less frequent rainfall will lead to larger concentrations of particulates in ambient air. The effects are even larger in non-attainment counties, potentially driven by the higher level of precursors and pollution sources. Using my findings, I exploit exogenous rainfall variation in an instrumental variables approach to also estimate the effect of increases in ambient particulate matter on the number of infant deaths. My estimates suggest that a 1 µg/m3 decrease in ambient PM10 concentrations would imply almost 27 fewer infant deaths per 100,000 live birth
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Power Through Autonomy: How Women Gain Voice in Household Decisions
No full textWe examine the effect of women's control over resources on their relative decision-making power within households, using an Instrumental Variable approach. We construct a composite Resource Empowerment Index that captures women's access to and control over economic and informational resources, including money, bank accounts, mobile phones, and knowledge of financial tools. To identify causal effects, we exploit variation in neighbouring women's media exposure as a source of exogenous influence on an individual woman's REI. We find robust positive effects of greater resource empowerment on women's relative say in household decisions, with evidence of diminishing marginal returns at higher levels of autonomy. We also find significant heterogeneity with large effects for older women, unemployed women, women in rural areas, those in larger households, those with less educated husbands and those with no children or more daughters
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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