This week in research #18

Here's what caught my eye in research over the past week:

• Carro and Gallardo (open access) use a reduction in school class size in Spain driven by the pandemic to evaluate the effect of class sizes on student performance, and find a positive and significant effect of the class size reduction of 0.11 standard deviations on student performance
• Tsaneva and LaPlante (open access) examine the impact of district-level crime rates in South Africa on individual depression symptoms using panel data, and find an increase of one standard deviation in property (violent) crime is associated with a 7.2 (8.7) percentage point increase in the probability of depression symptoms
• Lamonaca, Bozzola, and Santeramo show, using a gravity model, that climate differences are associated with bilateral trade flows (add climate distance to the types of distance that matter for trade, beyond geographical distance and cultural distance)