National leaders’ visits and temporary improvement of air quality: evidence from Chinese cities

Qingling Shi (), Chenchen Shi () and Feng Guo ()
Additional contact information
Qingling Shi: East China Normal University
Chenchen Shi: The University of Melbourne
Feng Guo: Shanghai University of Finance and Economics

Empirical Economics, 2020, vol. 58, issue 5, No 4, 2105-2127

Abstract: Abstract In China, during certain politically sensitive periods, there are increased incentives for local officials to prioritize environmental protection over economic growth, resulting in the phenomenon of temporary “political blue sky.” This study investigates the relationship between national leaders’ visits and air quality, using the Air Quality Index (AQI), individual pollutant data and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visits to cities during November 2013 and May 2017. The results show that AQI begins to drop around 20 days prior to Xi’s visits. Nevertheless, this improvement of air quality is only temporary—after visits, air quality quickly deteriorates to usual conditions. Moreover, the improved air quality before visits is primarily contributed by decreases in particulate matter of PM2.5 and PM10, which receive more attention from both government and public than other pollutants do, while other pollutants show no obvious changes. The analysis of Premier Li Keqiang’s visits also yields similar results, with less significant influence though.

Keywords: National leaders’ visits; Air pollution; Political blue sky; Event study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00181-018-1583-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:empeco:v:58:y:2020:i:5:d:10.1007_s00181-018-1583-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... rics/journal/181/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00181-018-1583-8

Access Statistics for this article

Empirical Economics is currently edited by Robert M. Kunst, Arthur H.O. van Soest, Bertrand Candelon, Subal C. Kumbhakar and Joakim Westerlund

More articles in Empirical Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().