Abstract: One “silver lining” of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the reduction in air pollution that followed lockdowns. Unfortunately, this unintended air pollution decline will likely be short-lived. As regions begin to recover their economies, travel and industrial activity will increase the ambient pollutants quickly offsetting the improvement in air quality. Therefore, it is urgent to clarify the causal impact of reopening an economy on air quality during COVID-19. Based on city-level daily air quality data in China, this paper is the first to em...
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Topics: 
Natural resource economics