Speaker: Anna Papp

Title: Who Bears Climate Change Damages?
Evidence from the Gig Economy

Abstract: This paper provides the first causal evidence that gig economy platforms shift climate change damages from consumers to workers without incremental compensation. Across diverse markets and climates (UK, Germany, France, and Mexico), I leverage detailed transaction data and public labor force surveys, exploiting exogenous variation in daily maximum temperatures. First, I show that consumers use food delivery platforms to avoid exposure to extreme temperatures. On hot days relative to moderate days, I find an 8-16% increase in food delivery expenditures and a similar decline in dine-in restaurant spending. On these days, food delivery workers work 1.7 hours more on average, exposing them to material health risks. Yet, I find that their hourly wages do not increase despite the flexibility of wages in this setting and the response of wages to other shocks. This combination of results is specific to platform-based work and not self-employment more broadly. My findings underscore the importance of climate-related risks in regulating app-based platform work and highlight environmental equity concerns arising from the shift of climate harms.