Air pollution and the quality of decisions
Air pollution and PM2.5 appear on 213 recent papers, but only 33 of them carry a cognition, productivity, decision-making, education, mental-health or worker keyword, and "cognitive performance" on 5. Pollution affects brains as well as lungs. How much do bad-air days cost in exam scores, work errors and bad investment decisions?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 213 papers carry an air-pollution, PM2.5, particulate or air-quality keyword (127 in economics journals, 54 in AI): "air pollution" on 85, "PM2.5" on 41, "air quality" on 24. Only 33 of them also carry a cognition, test-score, productivity, decision-making, education, mental-health, crime, worker, student or labour keyword, and "cognitive performance" appears on 5 papers.
Questions
- On high-pollution days, do students score lower on high-stakes exams, do workers make more errors, and do traders and analysts make worse calls?
- Are the effects larger for tasks that need attention and memory than for routine tasks?
- Does indoor filtration undo the effect, and what would that imply for the value of clean-air policy?
Data that could help
Daily pollution readings, exam results with dates and locations, call-centre or factory error logs, and trading records matched to the trader's location.
Next step
Match the dates and locations of a national exam to daily PM2.5 readings and estimate the score loss per unit of pollution.