Assessing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on China’s TFP growth: Evidence from region-level data in 2020

Kainan Huang, Baodong Cheng, Moyu Chen and Yu Sheng

Economic Analysis and Policy, 2022, vol. 75, issue C, 362-377

Abstract: This paper examines the first wave spread of COVID-19 in China and its impact on TFP growth for 2020, and assess the role of anti-epidemic lockdown policy in suppressing the pandemic. Methodologically, we systematically quantify the disparity in the pandemic’s productivity impact and the role of lockdown policies across regions, by combining the prefecture-level TFP growth for 422 regions (including 276 municipal cites and 146 county regions) with the daily statistics on the pandemic. Our results show that the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on TFP growth are more likely to occur in municipal cities, compared to rural areas. Moreover, the anti-epidemic quarantine policy succeeded to bring the COVID-19 pandemic down in China, but it may generate additional costs through dampening TFP growth if overused. Given the regions either with a relative higher resilience level or in the remote rural areas suffered more from the strict regulation. A more flexible policy is required to be designed so as to mitigate the ongoing COVID-19 impacts in future. These findings provide useful insights for China, as well as other Asian developing countries, to cope with its continuing episodes.

Keywords: The COVID-19 pandemic; Region-level TFP; Anti-epidemic lockdown policy; Sustainable growth in China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 I18 O18 O47 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:75:y:2022:i:c:p:362-377

DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2022.05.016

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