Archsmith, James, Heyes, Anthony and Saberian, Soodeh (2017) Air quality and error quantity: pollution and performance in a high-skilled, quality-focused occupation. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. ISSN 2333-5955

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Abstract

We provide the first evidence that short-term exposure to air pollution affects the work performance of a group of highly-skilled, quality-focused employees. We repeatedly observe the decision-making of individual professional baseball umpires, quasi-randomly assigned to varying air quality across time and space. Unique characteristics of this setting combined with high-frequency data disentangle effects of multiple pollutants and identify previously under-explored acute effects. We find a 1 ppm increase in 3-hour CO causes an 11.5% increase in the propensity of umpires to make incorrect calls and a 10 mg/m3 increase in 12-hour PM2.5 causes a 2.6% increase. We control carefully for a variety of potential confounders and results are supported by robustness and falsification checks.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	University of Sussex Business School > Economics
Depositing User:	Anthony Heyes
Date Deposited:	01 Feb 2018 16:14
Last Modified:	02 Jul 2019 13:35
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/73281

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