Tatyana Deryugina, from MIT, will present her research. 

Pollution and Mortality in the United States: Evidence
from 1972{1988


We estimate the eect of sulfur dioxide (SO2) exposure on US population mortality
over the period 1972{1988. Using changes in wind direction as an instrument for daily
SO2 levels, we show that acute pollution exposure produces both short-run mortality
displacement as well as lagged mortality eects in the month following exposure. On
net, we estimate that a one-day, one part-per-billion increase in SO2 raises monthly
mortality by 0.18 deaths per million. We then incorporate our estimates into a dynamic
production model of health to quantify the lifelong eects of chronic pollution exposure.
Model calculations of the eect of a permanent one-unit increase in SO2 exposure are
5{12 times larger than a simple linear scaling of the IV estimates of acute exposure.