Sep
7
Clean Air as an Experience Good in Urban China
Weizeng Sun, Siqi Zheng and I have just released a new NBER paper titled "Clean Air as an Experience Good in Urban China". In this blog post, I want to talk about our paper and make some general points about the persistence literature.
Here is the key logic chain for understanding our paper's main ideas and its contribution to the literature.
1. Before the COVID crisis of 2020, air quality was improving in many Chinese cities.
2. Some other Chinese cities continued to have very bad air pollution.
3. The COVID induced shutdown of the economy in 2020 sharply reduced air pollution in many Chinese Cities.
4. This improvement in the local public good has an "experience effect" as urbanites learn about their own demand for a good that they do not have much experience with.
5.
Here is the key logic chain for understanding our paper's main ideas and its contribution to the literature.
1. Before the COVID crisis of 2020, air quality was improving in many Chinese cities.
2. Some other Chinese cities continued to have very bad air pollution.
3. The COVID induced shutdown of the economy in 2020 sharply reduced air pollution in many Chinese Cities.
4. This improvement in the local public good has an "experience effect" as urbanites learn about their own demand for a good that they do not have much experience with.
5.
