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PRINZ Seminar

Air pollution and innovation

Felix Bracht (LSE)


Thursday 23 February 2023 11:30 - 12:30

This event is both online and in person

SAL 2.04, 2nd Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH

About this event

If air pollution harms innovation – and therefore future productivity – existing assessments of its economic cost are incomplete. We estimate the effect of fine particulate matter concentration on inventive output in 1,295 European regions. Exploiting two types of weather phenomena for identification, we find that a decrease in air pollution equivalent to the average yearly drop in Europe leads to 1.7% more patented inventions in a given region. A back-of the-envelope calculation suggests that accounting for the effect on innovation more than doubles the economic cost of air pollution as assessed in prior work.


Participants are expected to adhere to the Events Code of Conduct.


This event will take place in SAL 2.04, 2nd Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH.

The building is labelled SAL on the map. Enter the building via Lincoln's Inn Fields.

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