Fisman Raymond, Lin Hui, Sun Cong, Wang Yongxiang, Zhao Daxuan
Economics Department, Boston University, Room 304A, Boston, MA 02215, United States.
Finance Department, School of Business, Nanjing University, Anzhong Building, 210093 Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China.
J Public Econ. 2021 Apr;196:104389. doi: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104389. Epub 2021 Mar 18.
We examine Chinese cities' COVID-19 reopening plans as a window into governments' economic and social priorities. We measure reopenings based on official government news announcements, and show that these are predicted by citizen discontent, as captured by Baidu searches for terms such as "unemployment" and "protest" in the prior week. The effects are particularly strong early in the epidemic, indicating a priority on initiating economic recovery as early as possible. These results indicate that even a non-democratic government may respond to citizen concerns, possibly to minimize dissent.
我们研究中国城市的新冠疫情解封计划，以此作为洞察政府经济和社会优先事项的窗口。我们根据政府官方新闻公告来衡量解封情况，并表明这些解封是由民众不满情绪所预测的，这种不满情绪通过百度在前一周对“失业”和“抗议”等词汇的搜索量来体现。这些影响在疫情早期尤为强烈，表明政府优先考虑尽早启动经济复苏。这些结果表明，即使是非民主政府也可能回应民众关切，或许是为了尽量减少异议。
