Clean Air as an Experience Good in Urban China

Matthew Kahn, Weizeng Sun and Siqi Zheng

No 27790, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The surprise economic shutdown due to COVID-19 caused a sharp improvement in urban air quality in many previously heavily polluted Chinese cities. If clean air is a valued experience good, then this short-term reduction in pollution in spring 2020 could have persistent medium-term effects on reducing urban pollution levels as cities adopt new “blue sky” regulations to maintain recent pollution progress. We document that China’s cross-city Environmental Kuznets Curve shifts as a function of a city’s demand for clean air. We rank 144 cities in China based on their population’s baseline sensitivity to air pollution and with respect to their recent air pollution gains due to the COVID shutdown. The largest experience good effect should take place for cities featuring a high pollution sensitive population and where air quality has sharply improved during the pandemic. The residents of these cities have increased their online discussions focused on environmental protection, and local officials are incorporating “green” industrial subsidies into post-COVID stimulus policies.

JEL-codes: Q52 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-tra and nep-ure
Note: EEE PE POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Matthew E. Kahn & Weizeng Sun & Siqi Zheng, 2022. "Clean air as an experience good in urban China," Ecological Economics, vol 192.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27790.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Clean air as an experience good in urban China (2022)
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:nbr:nberwo:27790

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27790

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().