‘Effortless Perfection:’ Do Chinese cities manipulate air pollution data?

Ghanem, Dalia; Zhang, Junjie

doi:10.1016/j.jeem.2014.05.003

Cited by 410 publications

(170 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Second, it covers the whole country while ground-based pollution data covers only 42 cities in 2000 increasing to 113 in 2010. Third, ground-based pollution data is potentially subject to human manipulation (Andrews, 2008;Ghanem and Zhang, 2014) while the satellite data is not. The AOD pollution data is reported in grids of 50 by 60 kilometers.…”

Section: Primary Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Air Quality and Manufacturing Firm Productivity: Comprehensive Evidence from China

Viard

Zhang

2017

SSRN Journal

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We provide comprehensive estimates of air pollution's effect on short-run labor productivity for manufacturing firms in China from 1998 to 2007. An emerging literature estimates air pollution's effects on labor productivity but only for small groups of workers of particular occupations or sets of firms to ensure causality. To provide more comprehensive estimates necessary for policy analysis, we estimate effects for all but some small firms (90% of manufacturing output in China) and capture all channels by which pollution influences productivity. We instrument for reverse causality between pollution and output using thermal inversions.Our causal estimates imply that a one g/m 3 decrease in PM2.5 (SO2) increases labor productivity by 0.0084% (0.0572%) with an elasticity of -0.45 (-0.86). Lowering PM2.5 (SO2) by 1% nationwide through methods other than reducing manufacturing output would generate productivity increases of CNY 57.6 (110.5) thousand annually for the average firm and CNY 9.2 (17.6) billion annually or 0.06% (0.12%) of GDP across all firms. Accounting for output's contribution to PM2.5 (SO2) emissions leads to a net elasticity of -0.23 (-0.75).Using air quality of a nearby city conditional on wind blowing toward a focal city as an alternative instrument, we find a one g/m 3 decrease in PM10 increases productivity by 0.41% with an elasticity of -0.43 using a subsample of larger cities. Improving air quality generates substantial output and productivity benefits and these should be considered in evaluating environmental regulations and in evaluating their effect on firm competitiveness. JEL Codes: D62; Q51; Q53; R11

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Section: Primary Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Air Quality and Manufacturing Firm Productivity: Comprehensive Evidence from China

Viard

Zhang

2017

SSRN Journal

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“… 11 If the government indeed manipulates the API data when air quality is extremely bad as suggested by Chen et al (2012) and Ghanem and Zhang (2014), using the official API data tends to underestimate the true impact of air pollution. Our estimates probably represent a lower bound.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Happiness in the air: How does a dirty sky affect mental health and subjective well-being?

Zhang

Chen

2017

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management

505

274

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Previous studies evaluating the welfare cost of air pollution have not paid much attention to its potential effect on mental health and subjective well-being (SWB). This paper attempts to fill the gap by investigating the impact of air pollution on several key dimensions, including mental health status, depressive symptoms, moment-to-moment happiness, and evaluative happiness. We match a nationwide longitudinal survey in China with local air quality and rich weather conditions according to the exact time and place of survey. By making use of variations in exposure to air pollution for the same individuals over time, we show that air pollution reduces hedonic happiness and increases the rate of depressive symptoms, while life satisfaction has little to do with the immediate air quality. Our results shed light on air pollution as an important contributor to the Easterlin paradox that economic growth may not bring more happiness.

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“…In about 50% of cases analysed, cities reported dubious PM 10 levels, with discontinuities at the "blue sky" target cut-off. The authors conclude that this provides "suggestive evidence" of manipulation, which may occur "during the process of calculating daily average pollutant concentrations at station or city level" ( [7], p. 210).…”

Section: Bureaucratic Incentivesmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Environmental monitoring is a key feature of environmental governance in virtually every country of the world [5]. Data accuracy, defined as the "closeness of agreement between a measured quantity value and a true quantity value of a measurand" ( [6], p. 21), is a precondition for effective environmental monitoring [7]. The role of non-technical factors in undermining data and data-reporting accuracy in policy-oriented research is widely known.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accuracy of Environmental Monitoring in China: Exploring the Influence of Institutional, Political and Ideological Factors

Brombal

2017

Sustainability

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Environmental monitoring data are essential to informing decision-making processes relevant to the management of the environment. Their accuracy is therefore of extreme importance. The credibility of Chinese environmental data has been long questioned by domestic and foreign observers. This paper explores the potential impact of institutional, political, and ideological factors on the accuracy of China's environmental monitoring data. It contends that the bureaucratic incentive system, conflicting agency goals, particular interests, and ideological structures constitute potential sources of bias in processes of environmental monitoring in China. The current leadership has acknowledged the issue, implementing new measures to strengthen administrative coordination and reinforce the oversight of the central government over local authorities. However, the failure to address the deeper political roots of the problem and the ambivalence over the desirability of public participation to enhance transparency might jeopardize Beijing's strive for environmental data accuracy.Keywords: China; environmental monitoring; accuracy; decision making; institutions; politics; ideology All the questions had received splendidly drafted answers: answers not open to doubt, since they were not the result of human thoughts (always liable to error), but were the outcome of official labours. Lev Tolstoj, 1877 [1]

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‘Effortless Perfection:’ Do Chinese cities manipulate air pollution data?

Cited by 410 publications

References 24 publications

Air Quality and Manufacturing Firm Productivity: Comprehensive Evidence from China

Air Quality and Manufacturing Firm Productivity: Comprehensive Evidence from China

Happiness in the air: How does a dirty sky affect mental health and subjective well-being?

Accuracy of Environmental Monitoring in China: Exploring the Influence of Institutional, Political and Ideological Factors

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