IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejapp/v15y2023i1p192-229.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Temperature, Worker Productivity, and Adaptation: Evidence from Survey Data Production

Author

Listed:
  • Melissa LoPalo

Abstract

This paper estimates the impact of daily weather on worker productivity by using household survey data to study interviewers. Using data from over 9,000 Demographic and Health Surveys interviewers in 46 countries, I find that interviewers complete 13.6 percent fewer interviews per hour on the hottest and most humid days. Workers maintain the same total output by starting earlier in the day and spending more time on each interview at the expense of spending more hours in the field with the same total pay. In addition, interviewers become differentially less productive on tasks that are less easily monitored.

Suggested Citation

  • Melissa LoPalo, 2023. "Temperature, Worker Productivity, and Adaptation: Evidence from Survey Data Production," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 192-229, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:15:y:2023:i:1:p:192-229
    DOI: 10.1257/app.20200547
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20200547
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E141721V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20200547.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20200547.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/app.20200547?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joshua Graff Zivin & Matthew Neidell, 2012. "The Impact of Pollution on Worker Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3652-3673, December.
    2. Amitabh Chandra & Amy Finkelstein & Adam Sacarny & Chad Syverson, 2016. "Health Care Exceptionalism? Performance and Allocation in the US Health Care Sector," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(8), pages 2110-2144, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Biasi, Barbara & Lafortune, Julien & Schönholzer, David, 2024. "What Works and for Whom? Effectiveness and Efficiency of School Capital Investments across the U.S," IZA Discussion Papers 16713, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Matteo Picchio & Jan van Ours, 2023. "The impact of high temperatures on performance in work-related activities," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 23-052/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Sam Cosaert & Adrián Nieto & Konstantinos Tatsiramos, 2023. "Temperature and the Timing of Work," CESifo Working Paper Series 10681, CESifo.
    4. Sam Cosaert & Adrián Nieto & Konstantinos Tatsiramos, 2023. "Temperature and Joint Time Use," CESifo Working Paper Series 10464, CESifo.
    5. Barbara Biasi & Julien Lafortune & David Schönholzer, 2024. "What Works and for Whom? Effectiveness and Efficiency of School Capital Investments across the U.S," CESifo Working Paper Series 10884, CESifo.
    6. Dang, Hai-Anh & Hallegatte, Stephane & Trinh, Trong-Anh, 2023. "Does Global Warming Worsen Poverty and Inequality? An Updated Review," IZA Discussion Papers 16570, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Kahori Ishibashi & Ryo Takahashi, 2024. "Too“hot”to recognize her rights: The impact of climate change on attitude toward gender equality," Working Papers 2310, Waseda University, Faculty of Political Science and Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lee, Goeun & Beatty, Timothy, 2022. "Impacts of Wildfire Smoke on Farmworker Labor Supply," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322338, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Ross Levine & Chen Lin & Zigan Wang & Wensi Xie, 2018. "Bank Liquidity, Credit Supply, and the Environment," Working Papers id:12565, eSocialSciences.
    3. Hausman, Catherine & Stolper, Samuel, 2021. "Inequality, information failures, and air pollution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    4. Tiago Cavalcanti & Kamiar Mohaddes & Hongyu Nian & Haitao Yin, 2023. "Air pollution and firm-level human capital, knowledge and innovation," Working Papers EPRG2301, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    5. Nicholas Bloom & Renata Lemos & Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen, 2020. "Healthy Business? Managerial Education and Management in Health Care," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(3), pages 506-517, July.
    6. Beatriz Manotas-Hidalgo, 2021. "Addressing Oil Spills and Agricultural Productivity. Evidence of Pollution in Nigeria," Documentos de Trabajo - Lan Gaiak Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra 2109, Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra.
    7. Younoh Kim & James Manley & Vlad Radoias, 2017. "Medium- and long-term consequences of pollution on labor supply: evidence from Indonesia," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-15, December.
    8. Samar Khairy Ghanem, 2018. "The relationship between population and the environment and its impact on sustainable development in Egypt using a multi-equation model," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 305-342, February.
    9. Kam C. Chan & Tao Chen & Baohua Liu & Junfeng Wu, 2022. "Air pollution and CEO compensation: Evidence from China," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 448-469, April.
    10. Patel, Pankaj C. & Devaraj, Srikant & Quigley, Narda R. & Oghazi, Pejvak, 2020. "The influence of sunlight on taxi driver productivity," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 456-468.
    11. Kunz, Johannes S. & Staub, Kevin E. & Winkelmann, Rainer, 2017. "Estimating Fixed Effects: Perfect Prediction and Bias in Binary Response Panel Models, with an Application to the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program," IZA Discussion Papers 11182, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. de Oliveira, Guilherme & Lima, Gilberto Tadeu, 2022. "Economic growth as a double-edged sword: The pollution-adjusted Kaldor-Verdoorn effect," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    13. Lutz Sager, 2016. "Estimating the effect of air pollution on road safety using atmospheric temperature," GRI Working Papers 251, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    14. John A. Romley & Dana Goldman & Neeraj Sood & Abe C. Dunn, 2019. "Quantifying Productivity Growth in the Delivery of Important Episodes of Care Within the Medicare Program Using Insurance Claims and Administrative Data," BEA Papers 0111, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    15. He, Xiaobo & Luo, Zijun & Zhang, Junjie, 2022. "The impact of air pollution on movie theater admissions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    16. Alexandra E. Hill & Jesse Burkhardt, 2021. "Peers in the Field: The Role of Ability and Gender in Peer Effects among Agricultural Workers," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(3), pages 790-811, May.
    17. Hanna, Rema & Oliva, Paulina, 2015. "The effect of pollution on labor supply: Evidence from a natural experiment in Mexico City," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 68-79.
    18. Eunhae Shin, 2019. "Hospital responses to price shocks under the prospective payment system," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(2), pages 245-260, February.
    19. Stefano Bosi & David Desmarchelier & Lionel Ragot, 2015. "Pollution effects on labor supply and growth," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 11(4), pages 371-388, December.
    20. Carozzi, Felipe & Roth, Sefi, 2023. "Dirty density: Air quality and the density of American cities," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C83 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Survey Methods; Sampling Methods
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J81 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Working Conditions
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:15:y:2023:i:1:p:192-229. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.