COVID-19 Outbreak and Air Pollution in Iran: A Panel VAR Analysis

Mozhgan Asna-ashary, Mohammad Reza Farzanegan (), Mehdi Feizi and Saeed Malek Sadati ()
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Mozhgan Asna-ashary: Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

MAGKS Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung)

Abstract: The new Coronavirus pandemic has extensive negative socioeconomic impacts. However, its effects on climate change and in particular air pollution, at least at the beginning of the outbreak, is not clear. Fear of getting the Coronavirus in crowded public spaces increased the use of personal cars, while prevention policies that seek to decrease population movement reduced their usage. This paper investigates the relationship between the outbreak of COVID-19, measured by the number of infected cases, and air pollution, measured by PM2.5, in 31 Iranian provinces over the 19 February 2020 to 11 March 2020 period. We employ a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) approach along with impulse response functions (IRFs), variance decomposition, and Granger causality tests. The analysis shows negative responses of the PM pollution to positive shock in COVID-19 cases in Iran.

Keywords: COVID-19; Iran; panel vector autoregressive model; air pollution. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ara, nep-cwa, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-tre
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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