The effect of task switching on productivity : evidence from major league baseball pitchers

Farnell, Alex and Mills, Brian and O’Sullivan, Vincent and Simmons, Robert and Berri, David (2025) The effect of task switching on productivity : evidence from major league baseball pitchers. Oxford Economic Papers. ISSN 0030-7653

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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.