Do Lockdown Policies Reduce Economic and Social Activities? Evidence from NO2 Emissions

Abstract

This study empirically investigates how much economic and social activities were decreased by the implementation of lockdown policies during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We measure the magnitude of those activities using nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions. Our observations include daily NO2 emissions in 173 countries from January 1 to July 31, 2020. Our findings can be summarized as follows. Lockdown policies significantly decreased NO2 emissions in low-income countries during policy and post-policy periods. In high-income countries, however, NO2 emissions increased during both periods. In addition, the absolute impact of lockdown policies was larger during the post-policy period than during the policy period. While the stay-at-home policy reduced NO2 emissions, we did not discover robust differences between regions in its effect.