Inconvenientes del cambio de hora

Los que lean este blog con regularidad ya saben que soy un enemigo acérrimo del cambio de hora: aunque en nuestros últimos estudios vemos que sí hay un cierto ahorro energético, no termino de fiarme del todo de los resultados, porque nunca hemos sido capaces de tener buenos datos. Pero, en todo caso, creo que más allá del posible ahorro y de si es relevante o no, hay que sumar todos los inconvenientes que tiene el cambio (que son ventajas para algunos, la verdad). Y acaba de salir un papelito (otra vez estamos con el sesgo de confirmación) que trata de cuantificar estos inconvenientes:

Daylight savings time (DST) represents a public good with costs and benefits. We provide the first comprehensive examination of the welfare effects of the spring and autumn transitions for the UK and Germany. Using individual-level data and a regression discontinuity design, we estimate the effect of the transitions on life satisfaction. Our results show that individuals in both the UK and Germany experience deteriorations in life satisfaction in the first week after the spring transition. We find no effect of the autumn transition. We attribute the negative effect of the spring transition to the reduction in the time endowment and the process of adjusting to the disruption in circadian rhythms. The effects are particularly strong for individuals with young children in the household. We conclude that the higher the shadow price of time, the more difficult is adjustment. Presumably, an increase in flexibility to reallocate time could reduce the welfare loss for individuals with binding time constraints.