Drawing on a natural experiment generated by prefecture-level centralization reforms in China in the early 2000s, we study whether a centralized regulatory system delivers better environmental outcomes in a developing country context. We examine the impact of centralization reforms on firm air pollution emissions using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy. We find that centralization reform reduces firm air pollution intensities in total waste air, SO2, and soot. This effect is robust when we control for contemporaneous environmental policy changes and SOE reforms and when we use alternative differences-in-differences estimations. We perform placebo tests to further demonstrate that the relationship is unlikely a function of a selection effect and omitted variables. Empirical tests on mechanisms reveal that pollution reduction is mainly due to increased pollution removals during the end-of-pipe treatment stage while there is little evidence that centralization increases firm scale of production, productivity, efficiency, and innovation efforts. We show that such firm responses are likely a function of increased regulatory enforcement brought by the reform. Finally, we test whether a centralization reform drives local firms away (i.e., a spillover effect) and we find no supporting evidence.

This paper investigates the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic firms’ air pollution emissions in a developing country context. We provide quasi-natural experiment evidence from China, using a plausibly exogeneous relaxation of FDI regulations upon China’s WTO accession in 2001. Based on a panel of domestic major polluting firms of 1998-2007, we compare firm emissions in FDI-encouraged industries with firm emissions in unchanged industries before and after the WTO accession, using a difference-in-differences (DID) estimation. We find that FDI deregulation increases domestic firms’ air pollution emissions. Causal mechanisms show evidence for both agglomeration and competition effects; yet the competition effect dominates the agglomeration effect, resulting in an overall increase in firm emissions. Further, the competition effect mostly affects firm emissions through the production process rather than during the end-of-pipeline abatement stage. Finally, our main results do not change after we rule out potential reallocation and selection effects.

This paper examines the impact of a policy reform in China that removed inter-regional market barriers by incorporating counties into larger prefecture-level divisions. Employing a difference-in-differences approach, we compare the economic performance of incorporated counties before and after the reform to two control groups: counties that applied for incorporation but were unsuccessful, and counties that were incorporated at a later time. Our findings suggest that the reform had an immediate and sustained positive effect on the economic growth of incorporated counties. Using firm-level data, we provide evidence that the reform reduced policy-induced frictions, leading to increased regional specialization in industries with comparative advantage, more entries of new firms, and more exits of low-profit-margin firms. Overall, the research highlights the importance of reducing inter-regional market barriers in promoting economic growth in developing countries.

This paper exploits the rapid expansion of China's road infrastructure in the 2000s to empirically investigate the pro-competitive effect of transport infrastructure via the allocative efficiency channel. Dispersion of firm markups is used to gauge allocative efficiency of resources. We address the endogenous provincial road length by instrumenting road using a least-cost path route, and deal with the endogenous timing of road construction by using a network theory algorithm to predict road construction time. Our results show the mass construction of new road infrastructure, by lowering domestic trade costs, can significantly reduce markup dispersion of industries with high reliance on transportation. The baseline estimation indicates that the road expansion in China during 1998–2007 has induced at least 28.8% reduction in markup dispersion. Further analysis by disentangling price and marginal cost indicates that the reduced markup dispersion is primarily caused by the price drop of high-markup firms in the product market instead of cost reduction in the input market. This finding validates the presence of pro-competitive effect of road infrastructure. The heterogeneous analyses show several scenarios in which market competition is strengthened and the pro-competitive effect is more clearly manifested.

This paper studies the causal effect of corruption on the environment using a 2004 Heilongjiang anti-corruption campaign as a natural experiment. It examines the impact of the campaign on air pollution emissions of local enterprises using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, comparing firm-level outcomes in the treated province (Heilongjiang) with those in control provinces (Jilin and Liaoning) before and after 2004. The main result shows that the campaign reduced firm total waste air and sulfur dioxide emissions. This effect is robust when we control for contemporaneous environmental policy changes, SOE reforms, and provincial pollution reduction targets, and when we include another 17 non-coastal provinces as control provinces. We test four potential channels by which the campaign reduced firm pollution: we find that the campaign reduced emissions by reducing firm output (a scale effect) and reducing pollution intensities (a technique effect) while we are able to rule out both a re-allocation and a selection effect. Finally, we further explore causal mechanisms and find supporting evidence for 1) reduced corruption stopped greasing the wheel of economic development, resulting in a negative scale effect on firm output, 2) anti-corruption campaign increased the enforcement of environmental regulations, and 3) the campaign significantly increased firm R&D.

知识在空间上的交换与匹配是当前空间经济研究的前沿,但尚无充足的文献对其发生过程和影响机制进行经验识别.尤其在企业知识创新过程中,伴随着交换与匹配成本变化的创新行为又会呈现出怎样的特征?本文利用中国高铁项目建设这一准自然实验,基于多期双重差分的因果识别框架,实证检验了高铁建设带来旅行成本的降低对企业跨空间创新匹配行为的影响.研究发现:高铁建设显著促进了不同城市间企业的合作创新,促使企业更偏好于在高铁沿线城市中寻找创新匹配对象.同时,高铁沿线双边城市间形成的匹配关系质量也更高.从整体上看,高铁项目空间布局对创新资源存在广泛的再分配效应.本文结果具有良好的稳健性,对交通基础设施如何推动国家创新体系建设具有政策启示.

This paper investigates the impact of infrastructure on innovation collaboration between enterprises in different locations using the introduction of high-speed railways in China. Applying an instrumental variable approach to control for the endogeneity of high-speed railways, and using a large enterprise census that includes both manufacturing and service sectors in China, we find that high-speed railways can improve innovation collaboration substantially at the city level. More importantly, we match city pairs based on high-speed railway routes and calculate the amount of time saved by a high-speed railway for each city pair. The empirical results suggest that the innovation collaboration also increases significantly at the city-pair level. Innovation quality, measured by patent citations between cities, also increases. Further evidence on spatial heterogeneity, industry heterogeneity and ownership heterogeneity suggests that the impact of high-speed railways is more significant for collaboration in less developed regions, in the service sector and in domestic enterprises.

This paper investigates the long-run economic consequences of a place-based poverty alleviation program in China on individuals' human capital investment and labor market performance. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find a strong, positive causal relationship between poverty alleviation and education, especially for middle school. This is caused by the increases in rural household income and public expenditures on education. Meanwhile, there is a negative causal relationship between poverty alleviation and high school due to opportunity cost and local labor demand shock. Labor market performance, in terms of labor participation and occupation quality, has also been improved by the poverty alleviation program. Finally, we find strong heterogeneous effects across gender and family background. This paper generates important policy implications in achieving gender equality and human capital accumulation in developing countries.

本文选取长三角城市经济协调会这一地方政府主导的区域间市场整合干预事件,利用不同城市、不同企业间专利共同研发的数据,探讨长三角城市经济协调会如何影响企业在被整合城市间对合作创新伙伴选择行为的总体偏好特征与创新绩效.研究发现,同在长三角城市经济协调会中的城市合作效果提升显著,而仅有一方是协调会成员的城市间合作效果则显著下降,市场整合的创造效应和分流(转移)效应显著.本文为市场整合对微观经济主体创新合作行为的影响提供了证据,为创新水平存在空间差异提供了供给侧解释.

Does it pay to be “greener” as a local official in China? In this paper, we examine the effect of local environment regulation outcomes, i.e., local pollution, on leaders’ chances of promotion. This is an important question because only when the Chinese cadre evaluation system rewards local officials’ green behaviors, these officials would move away from their past priority in promoting economic growth at all costs, so that the environmental crisis in China might be addressed. We collect party secretary data for Chinese counties between 2001 and 2014 to measure promotion patterns. We construct county-year SO2 and PM2.5 pollution measures using NASA satellite data. We adopt an instrumental variable approach to deal with potential endogeneity issues of the pollution variables: for both PM 2.5 and SO2, we use ventilation coefficient, i.e., the product of wind speed and mixing layer height, as the instrument. Our empirical analysis shows that for county party secretaries, those who are able to reduce air pollution are more likely to be promoted. We find similar results for county magistrates. However, we do not find evidence for this pollution-promotion link for prefecture and provincial party secretaries.

This paper investigated the association between life-cycle factors and entrepreneurship. We provided a comprehensive investigation into life-cycle factors, such as marriage, health, education, age, previous labor market experience, and gender of children. Moreover, we focused on rural persons, who are confronted with a disadvantageous entrepreneurial environment. We found that marriage was positively associated with the likelihood of entrepreneurship, and the association existed only among rural men. Educated persons and healthy persons were more likely to engage in entrepreneurial activities. In particular, previous hospitalization experience and high medical expenses were negatively associated with entrepreneurship, while minor health problems were not correlated with entrepreneurship. Concerning the gender of children, daughters instead of sons were positively correlated with entrepreneurial probability, and the correlation was stronger and more significant among rural men. Our results could be useful for policymakers seeking to incentivize entrepreneurship among rural residents in developing countries.

<span id="ChDivSummary" name="ChDivSummary" class="abstract-text">本文使用2004—2007年中国制造业数据,利用断点回归（RD）识别策略考察了《最低工资规定》的实施对企业劳动资源配置效率的影响,并探讨了影响机制。研究结果发现,《最低工资规定》降低了企业劳动资源配置效率约3.61%—5.71%,且这一结论在放宽断点识别策略"伪随机性"的前提假设下依然成立。进一步的影响机制分析结果表明,《最低工资规定》引发的企业要素投入组合出现不同程度的"过度调整"是其降低企业劳动资源配置效率的一条重要途径。</span>

The spatial arrangement of firms is known to be a critical factor influencing a variety of firm level outcomes. Numerous existing studies have investigated the importance of firm density and localization at various spatial scales, as well as agglomeration by industry. In this paper, we bring relatively new data and techniques to bear on the issue. Regarding the data, we use a comprehensive census of firms conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS). This covers firms in all industries and localities, and we have waves from both 2004 and 2008 available. Past studies have largely relied on manufacturing firms. This additional data allows us to look more closely at clustering within services, as well as potential spillovers between services and manufacturing. Further, by looking at the case of China, we get a snapshot of a country (especially in the early 2000s) in a period of rapid transition, but one that has already industrialized to a considerable degree. Additionally, this is an environment shaped by far more aggressive industrial policies than those seen in much of Western Europe and North America. In terms of techniques, we take a machine learning approach to understanding firm clustering and agglomeration. Specifically, we use images generated by density maps of firm location data (from the NBS data) as well as linked satellite imagery from the Landsat 7 spacecraft. This allows us to frame the issue as one of prediction. By predicting firm outcomes such as profitability, productivity, and growth using these images, we can understand their relationship to firm clustering. By turning this into a prediction problem using images as inputs, we can tap into the rich and rapidly evolving literature in computer science and machine learning on deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Additionally, we can utilize software and hardware tools developed for these purposes.

There is evidence that local governments around the world collect bribes and make inefficient investments. What can influence local governments to reduce corruption and to invest responsibly? Ferraz and Finan (2012) show that local governments in Brazil are less corrupt when their mayors can stand for re-election and when a radio station and/or newspaper monitors them. In China, however, local (county-level) leaders are not elected and the state tightly controls the media. Nevertheless, using a large-scale reform in which some counties were required to post their data and to setup communication links for their constituents on their websites, we find that corruption fell substantially and public investments sharply increased in treated versus control counties. We interpret these findings using a model where county leaders benefit from being promoted and from collecting rents and, higher-level governments use postings from private citizens on social media to monitor country governments under their jurisdiction. Consistent with this mechanism, we find that following the enactment of the reform citizens in treated versus control counties massively increased their blogging on the social media using words related to government corruption and public investments. Satellite light data and sentiment tests suggest the reform led to an improvement in the quality of public investments in treated versus control counties.

本文利用双重差分法,全面评估了我国新《劳动合同法》的实施对农民工福利水平的影响.研究结果显示,新《劳动合同法》降低了农民工的工作时间长度达23％,提高了农民工拥有各项社会保险的比例为10％-26％,这一结论在消除样本选择性偏误后同样成立.进一步的分析发现,新《劳动合同法》对农民工福利水平的改善作用在工人议价能力较低地区和教育程度较低组别的农民工上更加明显,而在性别方面无显著差异.同时,新《劳动合同法》的劳动保护效果并没有因同时期其他经济因素的冲击而受到影响.本文的研究结论不仅对正处于争议中的新《劳动合同法》能否真正提高弱势群体的劳动权益做出了明确回答,而且对于制定和发展规范的劳动保护制度具有重要的参考价值.

This paper empirically investigates whether and how road infrastructure investment improves intra-industry allocative effi ciency measured by firm markup dispersion using Chinese manufacturing data. Instrumental variable approach is employed to address the possible endogeneity issues and identify the causal relationship between road infrastructure and markup dispersion. Our baseline empirical results show that improvement in road infrastructure can significantly reduce markup dispersion in industries more reliant on road infrastructure. Further analysis on mechanim indicates that competition effect as reflected by reduced price dispersion dominates cost effect as reflected by reduced marginal cost dispersion in accounting for the flatened markup dispersion due to improved road transportation. Besides, the allocative effect of road infrastructure is more silient in inland regions than coastal regions, and is largely driven by entry and exit of firms.

This study examines how firms with heterogeneous human capital quality respond differently to a welfare policy shock. In 2002, China expanded pension mandates from state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to private enterprises. Based on data covering all median and large manufacturers in China (around 250,000 firms), we find that their compliance rates varied widely across firms and increased in the average education level of employees. Utilizing these heterogeneous responses at the firm level, we estimate that the pension reform might have increased the return to education of employees by 8.75%. To address endogeneity in firms' human capital levels, we exploit the historical scale of local university as an instrumental variable. Moreover, we use SOEs as a control group, which was not directly affected by the policy shock. We find our empirical estimates robust to both measures.

基于我国113个重点城市1993-2009年工业三废排放量、污染治理投资以及社会经济发展指标统计量等大样本数据,采用倍差分析法对1998年实施的"酸雨控制区与二氧化硫污染控制区"政策进行实证研究,结果发现:"两控区"政策的施行使得污染治理总投资增加46.0%、工业二氧化硫去除量增加44.1%,"两控区"政策的出台明显改善了工业二氧化硫污染治理效果.研究结论还通过了一系列稳健性检验,包括以工业废水治理投资、工业固体废物排放量、工业固体废物处置量分别作为被解释变量,以及对"两控区"城市的地理、空间、政治不同属性的检验.研究为评估环境政策总体效果提供了借鉴,探讨了环境政策的影响路径,并从企业角度和政府角度对环境污染治理提出了政策性建议.

China's road investment boom since 1990 has often been criticized as excessive. In this paper, we estimate the return to road investment in China due to manufacturing firms' increased productivity between 1998 and 2007. To address endogeneity in road investment, we estimate the differential impact of road investment on firms with heterogeneous reliance on transport. Although some investment may be inefficient, our finding does not support the claim that road investment in China is excessive overall. The annual rate of return from productivity gains alone amounts to approximately 11%, partly due to positive spatial spillover. We find little return to road investment in inland China around 2000, but this has significantly improved since the mid-2000s. Our findings are robust to controlling for road quality, railroad investment, and variant markups of firms due to market demand and price shocks.