When the Lights Go Out : The Economic Impacts of Covid-19 on Cities Globally

This paper uses high-frequency nighttime time lights data to estimate the impacts of theCovid-19 crisis on economic activity during the first year of the pandemic for a global sample of 2,800 cities,covering a total population of 2.5 billion people. Activity is found to be negatively affected by both the spread of thevirus and the imposition of nonpharmaceutical interventions, but the negative impacts of the spread are large compared tothose of nonpharmaceutical interventions. Large differences in city trajectories are also observed. Cities in low- andmiddle-income countries faced a significantly larger overall loss of economic activity compared to those in high-incomecountries. Additionally, cities with higher population densities are found to be more resilient in the face of theglobal shock as compared to less dense ones, but this difference is only observed in low- and middle-incomecountries. Taken together, the findings suggest that the Covid-19 crisis gave rise to divergence in urban economictrajectories, both across and within countries.