We investigate whether and how environmentally inclined politicians (EIPs), i.e., politicians with prior environment-related work experience, affect local environmental performance in China.
We document public-sector window dressing behavior in China’s Compulsory Education Promotion Program during the 1990s. Window-dressing behavior has been well-documented in various organizations when an agent faces high-stakes incentives.
In rural China, the son preference paradoxically reduces the likelihood of early mother-child separation for girls, while boys are more prone to such separation.
We investigate whether high-speed rail (HSR) connectivity influences electric vehicle (EV) adoption, using a quasi-natural experiment from China’s HSR expansion and several identification strategies. Our findings consistently show that, by alleviating range anxiety, the expansion of HSR can account for up to one third of the increase in EV market share and EV sales in China during our sample period from 2010 to 2023, with effects particularly pronounced in cities served by faster HSR lines. These results suggest that transportation infrastructure can play a complementary role in accelerating the transition to electric mobility.
Relying on a large dataset on cash withdrawals of over 165 million bank cards from China, we find a higher ratio of cash withdrawals late at night is associated with criminal activity.