Productivity losses in the transition to Daylight Saving Time: Evidence from hourly GitHub activity

Abstract

Using data on GitHub users around the world, we estimate the effects of transitions to Daylight Saving Time on worker activity. In daily activity, transitions appear short lived—there is evidence of two days of declines before activity returns to baseline levels. However, hourly analysis reveals a transition to Daylight Saving Time that is much longer—losses appear in the early working hours of work days into a second week following the initiation of Daylight Saving Time.