How Much Will Climate Change Reduce Productivity in a High-Technology Supply Chain? Evidence from Silicon Wafer Manufacturing.

The frequency of hot days in much of the world is increasing. What is the impact of high temperatures on productivity? Can technology-based adaptation mitigate such effects of climate change? We provide some answers to these questions by examining how high outdoor temperatures affect a high-technology, precision manufacturing setting. Exploiting individual-level data on the quantity and quality of work done across 35,190 worker-shifts in a leading NYSE-listed silicon wafer maker in China, we evidence a negative effect of outdoor heat on productivity.

Is it costly to deceive? People are adept at detecting gossipers' lies but may not reward honesty.

The possibility that gossipers may share dishonest reputational information is a key challenge to claims that gossip can shore up cooperation in social groups. It has been suggested that imposing social costs on dishonest gossipers should increase the honesty of these reputational signals. However, at present, there is little evidence of people's willingness to impose costs on dishonest gossipers; there is also little evidence of their ability to detect gossipers' lies in the first place.

Truth, Lies, and Gossip.

It is widely assumed that people will share inaccurate gossip for their own selfish purposes. This assumption, if true, presents a challenge to the growing body of work positing that gossip is a ready source of accurate reputational information and therefore is welfare improving. We tested this inaccuracy assumption by examining the frequency and form of spontaneous lies shared between gossiping members of networks playing a series of one-shot trust games ( = 320).

Religious Fragmentation, Social Identity and Conflict: Evidence from an Artefactual Field Experiment in India.

We examine the impact of religious identity and village-level religious fragmentation on behavior in Tullock contests. We report on a series of two-player Tullock contest experiments conducted on a sample of 516 Hindu and Muslim participants in rural West Bengal, India. Our treatments are the identity of the two players and the degree of religious fragmentation in the village where subjects reside.