Did Scrubbing the Government Clean Up the Air? Polluter Responses to China's Anticorruption Campaign
Speaker: Valerie Karplus (MIT)
Date: Sep 7, Friday
Time: 12-1 pm
Venue: Room 1300
Abstract:
We study whether a central state-led intervention to reduce municipal government corruption affects air pollution from coal power plants. We exploit the quasi-random timing of mayor investigations during a nationwide anti-corruption campaign in China during 2013-2017, and show that an anticorruption investigation led to a substantial, statistically-significant drop in SO2 concentrations in the stack gases of private power plants, but not state power plants. These environmental improvements at the plant level are comparable in magnitude to those targeted by China’s air pollution policy, but attenuate over time.
Speaker’s website:
https://vkarplus.com/
Speaker: Valerie Karplus (MIT)
Date: Sep 7, Friday
Time: 12-1 pm
Venue: Room 1300
Abstract:
We study whether a central state-led intervention to reduce municipal government corruption affects air pollution from coal power plants. We exploit the quasi-random timing of mayor investigations during a nationwide anti-corruption campaign in China during 2013-2017, and show that an anticorruption investigation led to a substantial, statistically-significant drop in SO2 concentrations in the stack gases of private power plants, but not state power plants. These environmental improvements at the plant level are comparable in magnitude to those targeted by China’s air pollution policy, but attenuate over time.
Speaker’s website:
https://vkarplus.com/