Do Lockdown Policies Reduce Economic and Social Activities? Evidence from NO2 Emissions

Abstract

This study empirically investigates how much economic and social activities were decreased by the implementation of lockdown policies during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We measure the magnitude of those activities using nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions. Our observations include daily NO2 emissions in 173 countries from January 1 to July 31, 2020. Our findings can be summarized as follows. Lockdown policies significantly decreased NO2 emissions in low-income countries during policy and post-policy periods. In high-income countries, however, NO2 emissions increased during both periods. In addition, the absolute impact of lockdown policies was larger during the post-policy period than during the policy period. While the stay-at-home policy reduced NO2 emissions, we did not discover robust differences between regions in its effect.

WITHDRAWN: Assessment of COVID-19 pandemic effects on ship pollutant emissions in major international seaports

“…So far, most of the existing literatures related to the environmental impact of COVID-19 focused on quantifying the concentration change of atmospheric pollutants in the global context ( Bai et al, 2020 ; Deb et al, 2020 ; Le et al, 2020 ; Dang and Trinh, 2021 ; Keola and Hayakawa, 2021 ; Liu et al, 2021c ; Nguyen et al, 2021 ; Smith et al, 2021 ; Venter et al, 2020 ), countries ( Bao and Zhang, 2020 ; Berman and Ebisu, 2020 ; He et al, 2020 ; Petetin et al, 2020 ; Sharma et al, 2020 ; Shi and Brasseur, 2020 ; Wang et al, 2020 ; Isphording and Pestel, 2021 ), regions ( Li et al, 2020 ; Jiang et al, 2021 ; Ma et al, 2021 ; Sulaymon et al, 2021 ; Xian et al, 2021 ), urban ( Adams, 2020 ; Cameletti, 2020 ; Kanniah et al, 2020 ; Kerimray et al, 2020 ; Kumar, 2020 ; Otmani et al, 2020 ; Zangari et al, 2020 ; Zheng et al, 2020 ; Hong et al, 2021 ; Zhao et al, 2021 ), suburban ( Cui et al, 2020 ; Menut et al, 2020 ; Wang et al, 2020 ; Du et al, 2021 ; Hayakawa and Keola, 2021 ; Páez-Osuna et al, 2021 ), and remote areas ( Mandal and Pal, 2020 ). In the transportation sector, many studies concentrated on road traffic ( Ding et al, 2020 ; Dutheil et al, 2020 ; Li et al, 2020 ; Mahato et al, 2020 ; Shehzad et al, 2020 ; Tobías et al, 2020 ; Wang and Su, 2020 ; Xu et al, 2020 ; Chen et al, 2021 ; Hu et al, 2021 ; Rudke et al, 2021 ).…”

How is the Asian economy recovering from COVID-19? Evidence from the emissions of air pollutants

“…Furthermore, many studies have also examined the effect of lockdown orders on air pollution. Although most of these studies investigated the effect for a specific country or region, 1 some studies have examined the effect of lockdowns on the quantity of air pollutants emitted for a global sample (e.g., Dang & Trinh, 2020 ; Deb, Furceri, Ostry, & Tawk, 2020 ; Keola & Hayakawa, 2021 ). These studies have consistently found that lockdown orders decreased the amount of air pollutants emitted.…”