Fiscal pressure and carbon intensity: A quasi-natural experiment based on education authority reform

Mingfu Xue, Asif Razzaq, Sahar Afshan and Xiaodong Yang

Energy Economics, 2023, vol. 126, issue C

Abstract: Local governments are experiencing a sharp increase in fiscal pressures because of the slowdown in economic shifts and the external shock of COVID-19. Existing research is relatively scarce on how fiscal pressures affect carbon intensity. Therefore, this study investigated the impact of fiscal pressures on carbon intensity using a quasi-natural experiment measuring exogenous changes in fiscal pressures with the education authority reform, employing the continuous difference-in-difference technique based on a panel data set of 233 Chinese cities from 2008 to 2019. The statistical results indicate that the fiscal pressure generated by the education authority reform targets significantly increases carbon intensity. Increasing fiscal pressures boost carbon intensity by reducing government environmental concerns, upgrading industrial structure, increasing energy consumption, and weakening green technology innovation. Manifestly, the influence of fiscal pressures on promoting carbon intensity is larger in cities with low administrative prefecture levels, resource-based economies, and low financial resources.

Keywords: Governance; Fiscal pressure; Carbon intensity; Energy consumption; Education authority reforms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988323004176
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:126:y:2023:i:c:s0140988323004176

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2023.106919

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

More articles in Energy Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().