Productivity effects of air pollution: Evidence from professional soccer

Abstract

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Air Quality and Manufacturing Firm Productivity: Comprehensive Evidence from China

“…Air pollution has been found to increase students' absences (Currie et al, 2009) and their cognitive performances and test scores (Lavy, et al, 2014). It also has negative effects on short-run performance of outdoor athletic participants including soccer players (Lichter et al, 2015), marathon runners (Fu and Guo, 2016), and baseball umpires (Archsmith et al, 2016).…”

“…However, because these studies rely on the exogeneity of air pollution as an identification strategy, they focus on narrow groups of workers in particular occupations such as fruit picking (Graff Zivin and Neidell, 2012), pear packing (Chang et al, 2016a), call center services (Chang et al, 2016b), garment assembly (Adhvaryu et al, 2014a) or a few firms in textile assembly (He, Liu et al, 2016). Air pollution has also been found to negatively impact short-run productivity of outdoor sports personnel including soccer players (Lichter et al, 2015), marathon runners (Fu and Guo, 2016), and baseball umpires (Archsmith et al, 2016). While these estimates are useful for evaluating narrowly-targeted environmental policies or evaluating the costs and benefits for small groups of people, their external validity is of concern in evaluating broad-based pollution reduction policies.…”

Ambient air pollution and human performance: Contemporaneous and acclimatization effects of ozone exposure on athletic performance

“…measures, and exposure levels. Recent work has linked exposure to ozone with reductions in the productivity of agricultural workers (Graff Zivin & Neidell, 2012), whereas increased levels of ambient particulate matter have been linked to reductions in the performance of warehouse workers (Chang, Graff Zivin, Gross, & Neidell, 2016a), call center staffers (Chang, Zivin, Gross, & Neidell, 2016b), industrial workers (He, Liu, & Salvo, 2016), soccer players (Lichter, Pestel, & Sommer, 2017), and possibly participants in equity markets (Heyes, Neidell, & Saberian, 2016). Together, these findings suggest that air pollution imposes significant societal costs through channels beyond those measurable via administrative mortality and morbidity outcomes.…”

Air pollution and worker productivity

“…Furthermore, PM 10 , which consists of fine particulate matter as well as coarse particulate matter, has been linked with the performance of professional football players throughout Germany [12]. After assigning air quality data to the nearest stadium, the authors found that the number of passes per match decreased on days with higher levels of PM 10 .…”