Sharif Digital Repository

Air pollution in urban centers has become a key public concern around the world. Apart from its adverse health effects, air pollution could impact less visible outcomes like cognitive performance. Standardized tests are a fixture of all education settings that are susceptible to pollution shocks because they require high cognitive function. Given that test scores are widely used as signals by parents, employers, and education institutions, pollution shocks could render tests unfair and unreliable. In this paper, we combine pollution data with test scores from a large testing institution in Iran between 2012 and 2017 to quantify the impact of short-term exposure to air pollution on test...