Does Haze Cloud Decision Making? A Natural Laboratory Experiment

The Effect of Pollution and Heat on High Skill Public Sector Worker Productivity in China

“…We find that it takes judges more days to make a decision on complex cases when it is hot and polluted outside. 23 These results are consistent with recent experimental research by Chew et al (2018) who find that "a haze-induced increase in risk aversion may induce workers to exercise greater care thereby reducing their work pace in order to minimize the rate of defects and the variability of their compensations". *** Insert Table 4 about here ***…”

“…The decision time at 5-12 degrees Celsius is 18.4% higher than at the reference temperature range. This decision time steadily climbs until 28 degrees Celsius, and then falls at (Chew et al 2018).…”

“…1, we also test for several dimensions of heterogeneity. Recent experimental economics research has documented that the capacity to engage in sophisticated thinking is reduced by pollution (Chew et al 2018). We are able to test this hypothesis because we have classified the court cases by their degree of complexity.…”

Air Pollution and Mental Health: Evidence from China

“…This paper adds to this growing literature by providing a new determinant: air pollution. Third, a rapidly growing literature has focused on the effect of air pollution on outcomes that are beyond physical health, such as school attendance (Currie et al, 2009), test scores (Ebenstein et al, 2016), labor productivity (Graff Zivin and Neidell, 2012;Chang et al, 2016;Fu et al, 2017;He et al, forthcoming), labor supply (Hanna and Oliva, 2015), and decision making (Heyes et al, 2016;Chew et al, 2018;. This paper provides a new outcome of interest, which is mental health, and sheds light on whether our effects are partially a biproduct of other adjustments to air pollution such as exercise and physical health.…”

The impact of exposure to air pollution on cognitive performance

“…aging | cognitive decline | air pollution | gender difference | China W hile a large body of literature has shown that air pollution harms human health, in terms of life expectancy (1), illness and hospitalization (2), child health (3), health behavior (4), and dementia (5)(6)(7), knowledge about the potential consequences of air pollution on cognitive abilities is more limited. A few existing studies on the impact of air pollution on cognition have mainly focused on young students (8)(9)(10)(11). It is unclear whether their findings hold for the whole population or not, in particular for older cohort.…”