Productivity Loss amid Invisible Pollution

Chunchao Wang, Qianqian Lin and Yun Qiu

No 722, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: Ground-level ozone is a continuing problem worldwide, but research on the influences of ozone pollution on labour productivity in developing countries is insufficient. We investigate the effect of ozone pollution on outdoor worker productivity in the service sector using a unique panel dataset of courier productivities from a top five express company in China. Using an instrumental variable constructed from ozone pollution of upwind nearby cities, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in daily ozone pollution decreases courier productivity by 8.91%. The same increase in ozone in the previous 30 days decreases worker productivity by 37.9%.

Keywords: ozone pollution; air pollution; labour productivity; outdoor workers; contemporaneous effect; cumulative effect; express delivery industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 O13 P23 P28 Q51 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-eff and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/226371/1/GLO-DP-0722.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:zbw:glodps:722

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().