Projects

We investigate how scientists’ outside options affect their knowledge production. We document how the abrupt end of draft deferrals for American graduate students in 1967 sharply changed the outside option of young working male scientists.

I use the early twentieth-century establishment of commercial radio in the United States to quantify the impact of locally relevant farm programming on productivity growth. Using variation in exposure to radio due to topography, my analysis shows that the broadcasting of local farm programming led to an increase in the productivity of land used in agriculture that persisted for at least two decades. This positive effect was not limited to a certain region, and was felt in a variety of important crops grown across the country. Consistent with radio reducing information barriers, the productivity gains were more pronounced for farmers on areas with lower literacy rates and economic status, lower media saturation, and reduced transport connectivity via railroads.

This paper investigates the impact of air pollution on the quality of decisions in a bounded rationality setting. I exploit randomly occurring dust storms to quantify the effect of air pollution on cognitive performance of players of the strategy board game Go. I benchmark the quality of moves played by humans against move evaluations from a powerful Go artificial intelligence. My results show that particulate matter (PM) exposure increases blundering in game. This effect grows almost linearly with age; a 30 year old player experiences 15% more blunders with a PM shock of 75 micrograms per cubic meter, corresponding to a typical dust storm. Age asymmetric effects translate to game outcomes favoring younger players during dust storm days.