The Impact of High Temperatures on Performance in Work-Related Activities

Matteo Picchio and Jan C. van Ours ()
Additional contact information
Jan C. van Ours: Erasmus School of Economics

No 16431, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: High temperatures can have a negative effect on work-related activities. Labor productivity may go down because mental health or physical health is worse when it is too warm. Workers may experience difficulties concentrating or they have to reduce effort in order to cope with heat. We investigate how temperature affects performance of male professional tennis players. We use data about outdoor singles matches from 2003 until 2021. Our identification strategy relies on the plausible exogeneity of short-term daily temperature variations in a given tournament from the average temperature over the same tournament. We find that performance significantly decreases with ambient temperature. The magnitude of the temperature effect is age-specific and skill-specific. Older and less-skilled players suffer more from high temperatures than younger and more skilled players do. The effect of temperature on performance is smaller when there is more at stake. Our findings also suggest that there is adaptation to high temperatures: the effects are smaller if the heat lasts for several days.

Keywords: climate change, temperatures, tennis; performance, productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J81 Q51 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-env, nep-hea, nep-hrm, nep-lma, nep-res and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Labour Economics, 2024, 87, 102509

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16431.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of high temperatures on performance in work-related activities (2024)
Working Paper: THE IMPACT OF HIGH TEMPERATURES ON PERFORMANCE IN WORK-RELATED ACTIVITIES (2023)
Working Paper: The impact of high temperatures on performance in work-related activities (2023)
Working Paper: The impact of high temperatures on performance in work-related activities (2023)
Working Paper: The impact of high temperatures on performance in work-related activities (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16431

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().