Environmental regulation, political incentives, and mortality in China

Yongzheng Liu and Xiaoge Zhang

European Journal of Political Economy, 2023, vol. 78, issue C

Abstract: China enacted an environmental regulation policy in 1998, the “Two Control Zones” (TCZ) policy, to control air pollution in selected cities. Using a panel dataset of 208 prefectural cities for 2001–2012, this study applies a difference-in-differences approach to examine the policy's impact on mortality and identify the role of political incentives. We find the following aspects. (1) The policy significantly reduces mortality in TCZ cities relative to that in non-TCZ cities by 0.305‰ in the period when the policy is strictly enforced. On average, it translates into a 5.2% reduction in mortality. (2) The effect is particularly salient in the years when local officers are evaluated for political promotion and/or when they face stronger pressure for promotion, thus suggesting that political incentives play an important role in determining the effectiveness of environmental regulation policy. (3) The policy reduces industrial emissions of sulfur dioxide instantaneously, while the accumulation of which eventually leads to a lagged reduction in mortality in the cities. (4) The policy yields health benefits worth 1.1 trillion yuan for the treatment period in our sample (i.e., 2006–2012), which accounts for approximately 5.1% of GDP in 2006.

Keywords: Environmental regulation; Political incentives; Mortality; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 Q53 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268022001252
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:poleco:v:78:y:2023:i:c:s0176268022001252

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2022.102322

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by J. De Haan, A. L. Hillman and H. W. Ursprung

More articles in European Journal of Political Economy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().