 Political Blue Sky: Evidence from the Local Annual “Two Sessions” in ChinaQingling Shi, Chenchen Shi and Feng Guo Resource and Energy Economics, 2020, vol. 61, issue C Abstract: During politically sensitive periods, Chinese governments tend to take urgent administrative measures to control air pollution creating the temporary political blue sky. This empirical study uses the case of local "two sessions", one of the most politically sensitive periods in localities and examines the daily air quality index (AQI) as well as concentration data of air pollution components, including PM2.5, PM10, SO2, CO, NO2 and O3 of 319 cities in China from November 2013 to June 2018. Results show that AQI decreases by approximately 4.5% during local "two sessions" periods compared to non- “two sessions” periods. Air quality improvements are mainly reflected in visible pollutants such as PM2.5, PM10 and SO2. The mitigation of NO2 and O3, which is not observable by public, is not significant. In addition, the empirical results indicate that air quality deteriorates dramatically after the "two sessions". Therefore, the political blue sky comes with the price of catching up pollution that occurs after the political events. Keywords: Air Pollution; Political Blue Sky; Mobilized Governance (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:resene:v:61:y:2020:i:c:s0928765519300211 DOI: 10.1016/j.reseneeco.2020.101165 Access Statistics for this article Resource and Energy Economics is currently edited by J. F. Shogren and S. Smulders More articles in Resource and Energy Economics from Elsevier |
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