Fire has long served as a tool in agriculture, but the practice's link with economic activity has made its health consequences difficult to study. Drawing on data from satellite-based fire detection systems, air monitors, and vital records in Brazil, we study how in utero exposure to smoke from sugarcane harvest fires affects health at birth. Exploiting daily changes in fire location and wind direction for identification, we find that late-pregnancy smoke exposure decreases birthweight, gestational length, and in utero survival. Fires less associated with smoke exposure predict improved health, highlighting the importance of disentangling pollution from its economic correlates.

This paper studies the causal effect of education on decision making. In 1972, England raised its minimum school-leaving age from 15 to 16 for students born after September 1, 1957. An online survey was conducted with 2,700 individuals born in a 36-month window on either side of this date. Participants made 25 incentivized risk choices that allow us to measure multiple dimensions of decision making. Despite the policy having effects on education, educational qualifications, and income, we find no effects of the policy on decision making or decision-making quality.

This paper examines the claim that exchange rate regimes are of little salience in the transmission of global financial conditions to domestic financial and macroeconomic conditions by focusing on a sample of about forty emerging market countries over 1986 to 2013. Our findings show that exchange rate regimes do matter. The transmission of global financial shocks to domestic credit and house price growth, as well as to banking sector leverage and domestic output, is magnified under fixed exchange rate regimes relative to more flexible (though not necessarily fully flexible) exchange rate regimes.