More than particulates matter: Multiple pollutants and productivity in Indian call centers

We measure the impact of three components of air pollution on daily labor productivity in call centers in five Indian cities. We find that a one standard deviation increase in fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a pollutant that has been the primary focus of the literature on the harms of air pollution, has a large negative effect of 0.15σ on an index of intensive margin productivity. Notably, we find a comparable negative effect for a one standard deviation increase in carbon monoxide (CO) of 0.14σ as well as a negative effect of 0.09σ from ozone (O3). For one of our main productivity variables, the number of calls per shift, one standard deviation increases in PM2.5, CO and O3 lead to declines relative to the mean of 11.8 %, 10.6 % and 6.0 %, respectively. In summing air pollution harms across our sample, CO is responsible for more than half of the total productivity lost, which is more than double the losses attributable to PM2.5. We then illustrate the potential productivity impacts of an existing national policy in India that targets PM2.5 compared to a counterfactual policy that also targets CO and O3.