Can Increases in Local Air Quality Lead to Higher Labor Productivity
2016/05/10
研討會日期 : 2016-05-10
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Ronald Shadbegian
主持人 : Professor Daigee Shaw
地點 : Conference Room B110
演講者簡介 : Prof. Shadbegian received his Ph.D. in Economics from Clark University in 1991. He is currently a Visiting Professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. His research focuses on the costs of complying with environmental regulations and the economic impacts of environmental regulations on employment, productivity, investment, environmental performance, technological change and environmental justice.
演講摘要 : In this paper, we estimate the impact of changes in local air quality on labor productivity. We do this by combining hourly data on ambient concentration levels of specific air pollutants – particulate matter (PM2.5), ozone (O3), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrous oxides (NOx) – with high frequency data on indoor labor productivity at supermarkets in a western U.S. metropolitan area. The nascent literature on immediate impacts of different levels of air pollution on contemporaneous productivity has generally found that contemporaneous worker productivity on days with higher pollution levels is lower, but these studies are few, and focus on outdoor work or indoor settings in highly polluted areas. Though PM2.5 is capable of infiltrating buildings, amounts may be reduced by the use of air conditioning indoors. Our initial results indicate that there is no statistical relationship between ambient air pollution and productivity of supermarket cashiers, suggesting that indoor workers in climate controlled environments may be relatively protected from outdoor air pollution, when compared to outdoor workers or indoor workers without air conditioning.
