The effect of Beijing's driving restrictions on pollution and economic activity

V. Viard and Shihe Fu ()

Journal of Public Economics, 2015, vol. 125, issue C, 98-115

Abstract: We evaluate the pollution and labor supply reductions from Beijing's driving restrictions. Causal effects are identified from both time-series and spatial variation in air quality and intra-day variation in television viewership. Based on daily data from multiple monitoring stations, air pollution falls 21% during one-day-per-week restrictions. Based on hourly television viewership data, viewership during the restrictions increases by 9 to 17% for workers with discretionary work time but is unaffected for workers without, consistent with the restrictions' higher per-day commute costs reducing daily labor supply. We provide possible reasons for the policy's success, including evidence of high compliance based on parking garage entrance records.

Keywords: Driving restrictions; Externalities; Environmental economics; Air pollution; Commute costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 J22 L51 Q52 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (151)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004727271500016X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The Effect of Beijing’s Driving Restrictions on Pollution and Economic Activity (2013)
Working Paper: The effect of Beijing’s driving restrictions on pollution and economic activity (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:125:y:2015:i:c:p:98-115

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2015.02.003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().