Centre for Development Economics
Department of Economics
Delhi School of Economics
ANNOUNCE A SEMINAR
The Heat is on: Temperature and Test Scores in India
by
(IIT Kanpur)
(Thursday, February 26, 2026, at 2:00 PM IST )
Venue: Amex Room
Abstract:-
This study investigates the impact of test time temperature on test scores. Studies have shown that heat has a negative impact on human cognitive and physical ability, leading to an adverse effect on economic outcomes such as health, labour productivity and human capital formation. We look at how test time temperature affects test scores using a novel dataset from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in India. CBSE is the single largest board of education with an all-India presence. The dataset includes information on school location and test scores for more than one subject for a student. We leverage temperature variation across test days for each student. We find that a one standard deviation increase in temperature leads to a decrease in exam scores by 0.018 standard deviations for the period 2012-2015. We also find that temperature has a non-linear impact on test scores. Interestingly, we find that the impact of temperature varies by demographic characteristics, providing suggestive evidence of heat adaptation. Our results show that heat adaptation can partially mitigate the effect of heat on test scores. Furthermore, we find that the impact of heat on test scores mainly occurs through a physiological channel, and we rule out the agricultural channel.