Investors' reaction to environmental performance: A global perspective of the Newsweek's "Green Rankings" We use event study analysis to determine whether the release of Newsweek's "Global 100 Ranking" is relevant for the market. We look at one-and two-day event windows to check two possible reactions of the market: changes in the value of a portfolio consisting of one unit of the stock of each listed company, and changes in the relative price of the stocks. The results show that the market reacted to the "Global 100 Ranking" by changing the relative price of the stocks but not the value of the portfolio. Specifically, getting one position closer to the top of Newsweek's "Global 100 Green Rankings" increases the value of an average firm in the list by one billion dollar. There is also some evidence of a stronger reaction of non-U.S. traded stocks compared to U.S. traded ones. Non-heavy sectors display a more robust reaction to than heavy sectors. Results are very robust to different model specifications.

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Child stunting in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) decreased from 22.9% in 1990 to 9.6% in 2017. While stunting rates in the region were falling, access to electricity and refrigeration were on the rise. Despite a large body of evidence surrounding the effects of refrigeration on food consumption, and separately of the importance of food consumption for child health and nutrition, surprisingly few studies explore the potential effects of refrigeration on child nutrition. We studied the relationship between refrigeration and child nutrition outcomes using rich panel data for 1298 low-income households with children younger than 12 months at baseline in El Alto, Bolivia. We estimated the effects of refrigerator ownership on diet and nutrition outcomes using a difference-indifference approach. Owning a refrigerator was associated with increased food expenditures and improved child nutrition. We found evidence that households that acquired a refrigerator were more likely to buy food that requires refrigeration, and children in households that acquired refrigerators were 0.17 standard deviations taller for their age after 2 years. We also found that refrigeration was associated with a 0.26 standard deviation decline in BMI-forage , an effect driven by increased height rather than lower weight. These results suggest that refrigeration may play a role in explaining reductions in undernutrition observed in low-and middle-income countries in recent decades.

Several countries have implemented payment-for-ecosystem-services (PES) programs, buoyed by the promise of these programs as a win-win strategy that would allow both the conservation of natural resources, and the reduction of poverty for rural households and communities. Our study evaluates the effect on deforestation of Costa Rica's PES program, one of the oldest country-wide programs in the world. Costa Rica approved the 1996 Forest Law (Law No. 7575), creating a PES program that compensates landowners for forest conservation. We estimate these effects using an event study design with staggered entry into treatment. Our results show a statistically significant effect for the first year with a decrease in deforestation of 0.21 ha, but not for the following years. Given that the baseline level of deforestation in our sample is low, the magnitude of the effect is large. When compared to the pre-2016 average level of within farm deforestation, our estimated effect would imply a 100% reduction in deforestation for the first year after enrollment. Given the program pays the participants for a 5-year period, and that the effect is significant only during the first year, it may be beneficial for the program to reduce its length and implement required simplified annual contract renewals or other behavioral interventions to reduce noncompliance in subsequent years.

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