TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Liu, Yanyan
AU  - Ma, Shuang
AU  - Mu, Ren
        TI  - Uneven Recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic: Post-lockdown Human Mobility Across Chinese Cities
        PY  - 2021/Mar/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 14187
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp14187
        AB  - How quickly can we expect human mobility to resume to pre-pandemic levels after lockdowns? Does pandemic severity affect the speed of post-lockdown recovery? Using real-time cross-city human mobility data from China and a difference-in-difference-in-differences framework, we find that mobility in most cities resumed to normal six weeks after reopening. In contrast, the epicenter cities, those with the worst outbreaks, were slow to recover; twelve weeks after reopening, mobility had not returned to the pre-pandemic levels. We provide suggestive evidence that relatively undiminished pandemic concerns may have slowed down mobility recovery in the epicenter region. Our findings imply that a severe pandemic experience impedes post-lockdown mobility recovery. From a policy perspective, this study suggests that it is important to successfully contain the pandemic to achieve a faster post-lockdown recovery.
        KW  - COVID-19
KW  - population mobility
KW  - post-lockdown
KW  - China
        ER  -