Air Pollution and Mediation Effects in Stock Market, Longitudinal Evidence from China

By obtaining a novel proprietary city-level panel dataset of stock returns and trading volume in China, this article investigates the effect of air pollution on the stock market while avoiding the possible confounding factors reported in previous similar studies. The analysis finds evidence showing that there are significant negative effects generated by air pollution on stock returns and trading volume, and these effects manifest themselves on successive days. Air pollution affects stock returns on the same day, which then mediates the effect of air pollution on trading volume on the next day. Similar negative effects are also found in several different pollutants