Tae Soo Kang, Korea Institute for International Economic Policy: In this paper, Rashesh Shrestha estimates the long-term effects on cognitive ability of early life exposure to air pollution caused by the 1997 forest fires in Indonesia. A cognitive ability is recognized as an important determinant of success in the labor market.
Major findings of this paper are: (1) Individuals who were exposed to air pollution in utero during the period November 1997 to July 1998 scored lower on cognitive tests in 2007; and (2) As a result of this setback in 2007, earnings in 2014 for those affected by natural disasters diminished by as much as 8 percent. Lost earnings due to interrupted cognitive development could be an additional cost of exposure to air pollution.
My comments and questions follow and are in order.
First, the sequence of logic presented in the paper consists of two legs (Figure 1)....