Does the Kyoto Protocol as an International Environmental Policy Promote Forest Carbon Sinks?

Under the background of carbon neutrality, the carbon sequestration of forest ecosystems is an important way to mitigate climate change. Forest could not only protect the environment but also an important industry for economic development. As an international climate policy that first recognized the role of forest carbon sinks on climate change, the question becomes, has the Kyoto Protocol promoted the development of forest carbon sinks in contracting parties? To explore this, data of forest can be obtained at the national level. Hence, data of economic, social, polity and climate in 147 countries is also collected. The generalized synthetic control method is adopted. The results show that the policy effect of the Kyoto Protocol was obvious and significant. Moreover, the effect was more significant after the enforcement in 2005. Especially after the first commitment period, the policy effect of the second period is more obvious. Some policy implications are drawn.

Can China’s “Tax-for-Fee” Reform Improve Water Performance–Evidence from Hebei Province

Resource tax has been widely adopted in many countries. This paper evaluates the causal effect of reform of water resources tax on water resources performance in Hebei Province, China. By using the provincial panel data, we first measure the water resources performance of 21 provinces from 2008 to 2018 by considering the NDDF-ML method of undesirable output. We found that each province in China has gradually improved its water resources performance in the past 10 years, but there are great differences between regions. Then, we employ the synthetic control method, which allows us to consider the influence of unobservable time-varying factors to evaluate the policy effect. The results show that water performance index has increased significantly by 18.0%. The effect is mainly due to technological progress (17.3%) rather than technological efficiency (0.7%), which means no significant improvement in the allocation of water, and after placebo tests, our results are still robust. The DID approach shows a similar conclusion, but unobservable time-variation caused by other policies may lead to an overestimation of DID. In order to make good use of water resources, China should accelerate the reform of water resource taxes and pay more attention to the allocation of water resources.

Financial Modernization Act - Enterprise value and Reputation

The Financial Service Modernization Act of 1999 has been crucial to the financial service industry ever since its creation. There are two primary reasons this Act was mandated to aid the financial service industry- the merger/barrier reason and consumer privacy reason. This paper evaluates whether this policy has achieved this object and how the effect the policy has had on the financial service industry compares to the non-policy effect on wholesale trade industry, retail trade industry and service industry. This paper finds that this policy is one of the significant reasons, If not the primary reason, for the increase in the Enterprise Value (EV) of firms within the financial service industries over the industries. Furthermore, the findings suggest that customer complaints may have lessened within the financial service industries more than Wholesale and Retail trade industries but not the service industries.

Bayesian variable selection in hierarchical difference-in-differences models

A popular method for estimating a causal treatment effect with observational data is the difference-in-differences model. In this work, we consider an extension of the classical difference-in-differences setting to the hierarchical context in which data cannot be matched at the most granular level. Our motivating example is an application to assess the impact of primary care redesign policy on diabetes outcomes in Minnesota, in which the policy is administered at the clinic level and individual outcomes are not matched from pre- to post-intervention. We propose a Bayesian hierarchical difference-in-differences model, which estimates the policy effect by regressing the treatment on a latent variable representing the mean change in group-level outcome. We present theoretical and empirical results showing a hierarchical difference-in-differences model that fails to adjust for a particular class of confounding variables, biases the policy effect estimate. Using a structured Bayesian spike-and-slab model that leverages the temporal structure of the difference-in-differences context, we propose and implement variable selection approaches that target sets of confounding variables leading to unbiased and efficient estimation of the policy effect. We evaluate the methods’ properties through simulation, and we use them to assess the impact of primary care redesign of clinics in Minnesota on the management of diabetes outcomes from 2008 to 2017.

Does China’s Low-Carbon Pilot Policy Promote Foreign Direct Investment? An Empirical Study Based on City-Level Panel Data of China

As an important driving force of China’s economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI) may be affected by China’s low-carbon pilot policy. Therefore, this paper regards the low-carbon pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment, and uses the difference-in-difference (DID) model and the panel data of 189 cities in China from 2011 to 2018 to explore the actual impact and intermediary mechanism of low-carbon pilot policy on FDI. The study found that low-carbon pilot policy has a significant promotion effect on FDI, and industrial optimization and upgrading is an important way. At the same time, we construct the difference-in-difference-in-difference (DDD) model, and discuss the heterogeneity of policy effect caused by resource endowments and the individual characteristics of government officials in the process of policy implementation. The results indicate that resource-rich cities can enhance the promotion effect of low-carbon pilot policy on FDI. Similarly, when the mayor of the pilot city is a female, or obtains a master’s degree or a doctorate degree, or majored in non-economics, respectively, the policy effect will be more obvious. In addition, in order to verify the reliability of the research conclusions, this paper also uses a placebo test and data truncation to conduct a series of robustness tests.

Horizontal Differentiation and the Policy Effect of Charter Schools

While school choice may enhance competition, incentives for public schools to raise productivity may be muted if public education is imperfectly substitutable with alternatives. This paper estimates the aggregate effect of charter school expansion on education quality while accounting for the horizontal differentiation of charter programs. Our research design leverages variation following the removal of North Carolina’s statewide cap to compare test score changes for students who lived near entering charters to those farther away. We find learning gains that are driven by public schools responding to increased competition from non-horizontally differentiated charter schools, even before those charters actually open. (JEL H75, I21, I28)

Environmental Courts, Environment and Employment: Evidence from China

Whether environmental governance will cause unemployment has always been an aspect that the government needs to pay attention to in the process of making environmental policies, and is also a concern of residents. This paper analyzes the policy effect of environmental courts, which is a very important policy tool for the legalization of China’s environmental governance. While investigating whether environmental courts can effectively improve environmental quality, we also analyze its possible impact on employment and the specific mechanisms. The results show that: (1) After the establishment of environmental courts, the PM2.5 concentration has been significantly reduced. (2) While improving the environmental quality, environmental courts will produce a weak employment promotion effect. (3) Environmental courts affect the amount of employment through cost effect, factor substitution effect and innovation effect. This study provides empirical evidence for China and other developing countries to promote the legalization of environmental governance.