Does stringency of lockdown affect air quality? Evidence from Indian cities

Surender Kumar and Shunsuke Managi

No 312, Working papers from Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics

Abstract: The precipitous spread of COVID-19 has created a conflict between human health and economic well-being. To contain the spread of its contagious effect, India imposed the stringent lockdown, and then the stringency was relaxed to some extent in its succeeding phases. We measure social benefits of the lockdown in terms of improved air quality in Indian cities by quantifying the effects with city-specific slope coefficients. We find that the containment measures have resulted in improvement in air quality, but it is not uniform across cities and across pollutants. The level of PM2.5 decreases from about 6 to 25 percent in many cities. Moreover, we observe that partial relaxations do not help in resuming economic and social activities. It should also be noted that counter-virus measures could not bring levels of the emissions to WHO standards; it highlights the importance of role of green production and consumption activities.

JEL-codes: I15 I18 Q52 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2020-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Journal Article: Does Stringency of Lockdown Affect Air Quality? Evidence from Indian Cities (2020)
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