The effect of task switching on productivity: evidence from major league baseball pitchers
利用美国职业棒球大联盟先发投手的数据，研究任务切换（投球与击球之间切换）对后续投球表现的影响，发现任务切换能提升生产率，但效果存在异质性。
Abstract There are few opportunities, outside of a laboratory setting, to study how workers respond to the demands of task switching. A priori, task switching might either harm or benefit productivity, and thus it becomes an empirical question. Faced with difficulties in the measurement of productivity and task switching, we turn to an industry that produces accurate, detailed, and comparable measures of worker production, namely starting pitchers in Major League Baseball. Our results suggest that task switching, between pitching and batting, can improve subsequent pitching performance, though heterogeneity in this effect is present. We discuss implications for wider labour market settings.