Ambiguous Pollution Response to COVID-19 in China

Abstract

We thank the National Science Foundation for support through Award SES-1658888: "Collaborative Research: Market Based Emissions Policies" in China. We thank Janet Currie, Valerie Karplus, Anouch Missirian, and Wolfram Schlenker for helpful comments and Solveig Asplund for proofreading. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Suggestions for a Covid-19 Post-Pandemic Research Agenda in Environmental Economics

“…Although a lockdown is an extreme case studies in this area can provide information on the possible health benefits from a range of environmental policies including congestion charging, more cycle lanes, or the permanent or temporary closure of polluting businesses. Research that has examined the impact of Covid-19 on air pollution include (Dutheil et al 2020;Alomnd et al 2020;Cole et al (2020a)). Despite using different (but related) methods, both Alomnd et al (2020) and Cole et al (2020a) find significant reductions in NO2 in the areas around Wuhan but surprisingly little effect on a range of other pollutants.…”

“…Research that has examined the impact of Covid-19 on air pollution include (Dutheil et al 2020;Alomnd et al 2020;Cole et al (2020a)). Despite using different (but related) methods, both Alomnd et al (2020) and Cole et al (2020a) find significant reductions in NO2 in the areas around Wuhan but surprisingly little effect on a range of other pollutants. The former study uses a DD approach to estimate a model that takes into account annual differences in air quality and the expected drop in pollution due to the Lunar New Year in China that happened just before lockdowns started.…”

Suffering in silence: How COVID-19 school closures inhibit the reporting of child maltreatment

“…This study contributes to the emerging literature seeking to understand the public policy implications of COVID-19. Recent studies have examined the effects of COVID-19 policy responses (e.g., shelter-in-place orders) on outcomes such as mortality ( Dave et al, 2020 ; Friedson et al, 2020 ), pollution ( Almond et al, 2020 ), economic activity ( Bartik et al, 2020 ; Hassan et al, 2020 ; Lewis et al, 2020 ), and inequalities by health access ( Schmitt-Grohé et al, 2020 ), internet access ( Chiou and Tucker, 2020 ), and gender ( Alon et al, 2020 ). We focus on the impacts of school closures in response to COVID-19.…”

COVID-19 Prevention and Air Pollution in the Absence of a Lockdown

“…There is a fast-growing literature on the impact of COVID-19 on air pollution across the world. Many studies analyze data from individual cities with air pollution monitoring stations (Xu et al, 2020;He, Pan and Tanaka, 2020;Baldasano, 2020;Almond, Du and Zhang, 2020;Collivignarelli et al, 2020;Brodeur, Cook and Wright, 2020;Mahato, Pal and Ghosh, 2020;Zangari et al, 2020, Cole, Elliot andLiu, 2020), while others analyze satellite imagery over countries or broad regions of the globe (Wang and Su, 2020;Shi and Brasseur, 2020;Fan et al, 2020;Bauwens et al, 2020).…”