R. Jisung Park

Despite the prevalence of high stakes cognitive assessments – and the growing likelihood of heat exposure during such assessments – the effect of temperature on high stakes cognitive performance has not yet been studied. Using student-level administrative data for the largest public school district in the United States, I provide the first estimates of the impact of hot temperature on high-stakes exam performance and subsequent educational attainment. Hot days reduce performance by up to 15% and lead to persistent impacts on high school graduation status, despite what appears to be compensatory responses by teachers.

Using data covering the universe of injury claims from the nation’s largest worker’s compensation system (2001-2018), we explore the relationship between temperature and workplace safety and its implications for labor market inequality. Hotter temperature increases workplace injuries significantly, causing approximately 20,000 injuries per year. The effects persist in both outdoor and indoor settings (e.g. manufacturing, warehousing), and for injury types ostensibly unrelated to temperature (e.g. falling from heights), consistent with cognitive or cost-related channels. The risks are substantially larger for men versus women; for younger versus older workers; and for workers at the lower end of the income distribution, suggesting that accounting for workplace heat exposure may exacerbate total compensation inequality. We document a decline in the heat-sensitivity of injuries over the study period, suggesting significant scope for adaptation using existing technologies. (JEL codes: J...

This paper explores the relationship between temperature and the human capital production process. Using student-level administrative data for a major US public school district and quasi-experimental variation in weather, I estimate the causal impact of hot temperature on educational outcomes. Heat exposure during a high stakes exam reduces performance by up to 15%, controlling for individual ability and accounting for avoidance behaviors. This leads to persistent impacts on educational attainment (e.g. high school graduation). The evidence also indicates that cumulative heat exposure may affect the rate of learning, and highlights the role of institutions in determining optimal adaptive responses to climate change. ∗Park: Harvard University, UCLA Luskin School of Public Policy, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, jisungpark@fas.harvard.edu. Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Larry Katz, Andrei Shleifer, Robert Stavins, Joe Aldy, Geoffrey Heal, Raj Chetty, Claudia G...

Putting a price on carbon is critical for climate change policy. Increasingly, policymakers combine multiple policy tools to achieve this, for example by complementing cap-and-trade schemes with a carbon tax, or with a feed-in tariff. Often, the motivation for doing so is to limit undesirable fluctuations in the carbon price, either from rising too high or falling too low. This paper reviews the implications for the carbon price of combining cap-and-trade with other policy instruments. We find that price intervention may not always have the desired effect. Simply adding a carbon tax to an existing cap-and-trade system reduces the carbon price in the market to such an extent that the overall price signal (tax plus carbon price) may remain unchanged. Generous feed-in tariffs or renewable energy obligations within a capped area have the same effect: they undermine the carbon price in the rest of the trading regime, likely increasing costs without reducing emissions. Policymakers wishin...

The pressing reality of global climate change has resulted in a great deal of focus on proposals for market-based government intervention. Currently proposed intervention can take one of two forms: either it can achieve reductions in carbon emissions by controlling the quantity of allowable carbon emissions or it can do the same by setting the price of carbon emissions. If we approach the issue of climate change as a classic externality problem and assume perfect information, economic theory suggests that an optimal level of carbon abatement can be achieved by either method. But, with the issue of climate change we are dealing with a host of unknown costs and benefits of abatement, and we cannot be sure that either method will be efficient. Thus, the role of uncertainty must factor into any policy decision. In this paper, we apply theoretical concepts of informational uncertainty to the issue of climate change. We find that depending on the curvatures of the costs and benefit functi...