Spotlight on postdoctoral fellow Gregor Singer

August 2020

Gregor Singer is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation working alongside CGT Director Joshua Graff Zivin. He works on issues in environmental and development economics, as well as empirical industrial organization.

Singer is currently working on a research project focused on how air quality affects the occurrence of severe influenza cases that require inpatient hospitalization. In the working paper titled “Air Pollution Increases Influenza Hospitalizations,” Singer, along with co-authors Graff Zivin, Matthew Neidell and Nicholas Sanders, combine copious amounts of data on local air quality and hospital admissions across the U.S. to show that poor air quality increases the incidence of influenza hospital admissions and the effects diminish in years with greater vaccine effectiveness. In short, the authors conclude that in addition to increasing vaccination rates, improving air quality may help reduce influenza spread and severity.

A second line of Singer’s current work explores the effects of electricity prices on industrial energy efficiency and industrial development using data from factories across India.

Singer received a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has also been affiliated with the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and worked as a consultant for both the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Global Green Growth Institute.