Air pollution can have serious consequences for a person’s quality of life. Inhaling high concentrations of “fine particulate matter,” or particles approximately 40 times smaller than a grain of sand, has been linked to cancer, heart disease, and even death Jonathan Colmer told an online audience last week.

Parag A. Pathak is the Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton Professor of Microeconomics at MIT, found­ing co-director of the NBER Working Group on Market Design, and founder of MIT’s School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative (SEII), a laboratory focused on education, human capital, and the income distribution.

Jointly sponsored by Curry, Economics, and the Frank Batten School

Charles Holt is the A. Willis Robertson Professor of Political Economy at the University of Virginia, where he also teaches in the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy

Ed Olsen is a professor of economics in the College of Arts and Sciences, where he served as chairman of the Department of Economics, and a professor of public policy in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

John V. Pepper is a Professor of Economics at the University of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1996, and his B.A. in Quantitative Economics from Tufts University in 1987.

Jay Shimshack is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics, and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School. He received a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley and a B.S. from Cornell University. Prior to joining UVa, Shimshack held positions at Tulane University and Tufts University and a visiting faculty fellowship at the University of Michigan. His major fields are environmental regulation, environmental economics, corporate social behavior, and applied microeconomics for public policy.