IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/landec/v95y2019i2p157-173.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pollution and Politician Productivity: The Effect of PM on MPs

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Heyes
  • Nicholas Rivers
  • Brandon Schaufele

Abstract

Applying methods of textual analysis to all 119,225 speeches made in the Canadian House of Commons between 2006 and 2011, we establish that air pollution reduces the speech quality of Canadian members of parliament (MPs). Exposure to fine particulate matter concentrations exceeding 15 µg/m3 causes a 2.3% reduction in the quality of MPs’ speech (equivalent to a 2.6 month decrease in education). For more difficult communication tasks the decrement in quality is equivalent to the loss of 6.5 months of schooling. Our design accounts for the potential endogeneity of exposure and controls for many potential confounders including individual fixed effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Heyes & Nicholas Rivers & Brandon Schaufele, 2019. "Pollution and Politician Productivity: The Effect of PM on MPs," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 95(2), pages 157-173.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwp:landec:v:95:y:2019:i:2:p:157-173
    Note: DOI: 10.3368/le.95.2.157
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://le.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/95/2/157
    Download Restriction: A subscripton is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Chunchao & Lin, Qianqian & Qiu, Yun, 2022. "Productivity loss amid invisible pollution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    2. Jingnan Chen & Miguel A. Fonseca & Anthony Heyes & Jie Yang & Xiaohui Zhang, 2023. "How Much Will Climate Change Reduce Productivity in a High-Technology Supply Chain? Evidence from Silicon Wafer Manufacturing," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 86(3), pages 533-563, November.
    3. Aloys Prinz & David J. Richter, 2021. "Feinstaubbelastung und Lebenserwartung in Deutschland," AStA Wirtschafts- und Sozialstatistisches Archiv, Springer;Deutsche Statistische Gesellschaft - German Statistical Society, vol. 15(3), pages 237-272, December.
    4. Cook, Nikolai & Heyes, Anthony, 2022. "Pollution pictures: Psychological exposure to pollution impacts worker productivity in a large-scale field experiment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    5. Msefula, Griffin & Hou, Tony Chieh-Tse & Lemesi, Tina, 2024. "Dynamics of legal structure and geopolitical influence on carbon tax in response to green transportation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 371(C).
    6. Lohmann, Paul M. & Gsottbauer, Elisabeth & You, Jing & Kontoleon, Andreas, 2023. "Air pollution and anti-social behaviour: Evidence from a randomised lab-in-the-field experiment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 320(C).
    7. Ron Chan & Martino Pelli & Veronica Vienne, 2023. "Air Pollution, Smoky Days and Hours Worked," CIRANO Working Papers 2023s-15, CIRANO.
    8. Wang, Chunchao & Lin, Qianqian & Qiu, Yun, 2020. "Productivity Loss amid Invisible Pollution," GLO Discussion Paper Series 722, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    9. Bellani, Luna & Ceolotto, Stefano & Elsner, Benjamin & Pestel, Nico, 2021. "Air Pollution Affects Decision-Making: Evidence from the Ballot Box," IZA Discussion Papers 14718, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Luis Sarmiento & Adam Nowakowski, 2023. "Court Decisions and Air Pollution: Evidence from Ten Million Penal Cases in India," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 86(3), pages 605-644, November.
    11. Luis Sarmiento, 2022. "Air pollution and the productivity of high‐skill labor: evidence from court hearings," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(1), pages 301-332, January.
    12. Humphreys, Brad R. & Ruseski, Jane E., 2023. "Air quality and employee performance in teams: Evidence from the NFL," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uwp:landec:v:95:y:2019:i:2:p:157-173. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://le.uwpress.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.