The Willingness to Pay for a Cooler Day: Evidence from 50 Years of Major League Baseball Games

The climate economy literature has documented adverse effects of extreme temperatures on well-being through mechanisms such as mortality, productivity, and conflict. Impacts due simply to discomfort are less well understood. This paper investigates individuals' valuations of weather using a revealed preference approach. We first quantify the decline in attendance at Major League Baseball games on hot and cold days. Leveraging this finding coupled with the historically informed assumption of a horizontal supply curve, we infer a monetized estimate of the disutility of extreme temperatures. We estimate a $1.53 utility loss per hour of exposure to high temperatures, implying nontrivial aggregate welfare effects. (JEL D12, I31, L83, Q54, Z21)