The comovement between epidemics and atmospheric quality in emerging countries

This research examines the short- or long-term relationship between epidemics and atmospheric quality via panel data of 69 countries over the period 1990–2019. By employing the panel univariate LM unit root test, panel cointegration tests with multiple structural breaks, and FMOLS estimations as well as the panel vector error correction model (VECM), we find that a bi-directional relationship among variables exists in the full sample. More importantly, from a long-term perspective we also note that the impact of epidemics on atmospheric quality is negative. Therefore, we hypothesize that this may be related to the retaliatory emissions of companies after epidemics and poor government supervision. For a more in-depth investigation, we take CO2 emissions of the industrial and transportation sectors as the proxy variables and see that the more developed an economy is, the greater is the cointegration between epidemics and atmospheric quality. Our research offers implications for policy makers, such that improving atmospheric quality is an important way to prevent epidemics, and in order to alleviate and eliminate the spread of epidemics governments should pay more attention to environmental control.