Heating Up and Cooling Down: Mitigating Economic Consequences of Temperature and Weather on Sleep

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between sleep, productivity, and weather and climate conditions and identifies sleep aids which mitigate these effects. I utilize a combination of data scraped from Weather Underground and RCT data available from Bessone et al. (2021) to answer these questions. I first match the panel data set of actigraphs from the RCT study to city-level atmospheric and weather data between 2017 and 2019. Then I examine the extent to which temperature and climate contribute to the nightly sleep deprivations observed in the sleep data, and finally estimate how this effect on sleep and productivity is mitigated by sleep aids in the study. I find that certain sleep aids are significantly effective at mitigating the negative impact of temperature on sleep and productivity, but do not amplify the positive effects of rainfall on sleep.

Keywords: Sleep, Heat, Weather, Rainfall, Productivity

JEL Classification: Q54, I15, D9