Leaders, environment, and economic growth

Abstract

My first essay assesses how environmental performance evaluation affects local air quality. I exploit a natural experiment of environmental performance evaluation for local leaders within China’s regionally decentralized authoritarian system (RDA).The literature has well established the framework that local leaders are promoted by the achievements of economic growth and, as a result, environment pollution is highlighted as an external negative effect. The Central Government starts to try a multi-task design by embedding the environment quality into the achievement package for local leaders. Using difference\--in\--difference framework after PSM, I find that different regions have distinct patterns of environmental quality change when environmental performance evaluation for local governors is implemented and that different quality indexes also affect leader’s promotion differently. Generally speaking, environmental performance evaluation helps diminish problem of pollution for promotion. But, different results in different regions also implies that environmental evaluation does not work automatically; rather, there are several factors that make it effective: measurable and quantifiable environmental indicators, authoritative evaluation institutions, and the strong link between environment indicators and leaders’ promotion and punishments.

My second essay analyzes how provincial leaders balance career concerns and politics within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Using detailed biographical information about the city and provincial officials, this empirical analysis covers the appointment of city officials. The results show that provincial secretaries emphasize GDP at different degrees during their different career periods when promoting local leaders. City leaders' working periods with new provincial secretaries significantly improve city leaders' promotion probability, and provincial leaders have less incentive to select local leaders who can gain higher economic growth while having a less political relationship. I also found heterogeneous effects of leaders’ turnover on economic growth. I further use the stable lights published by NGDC to estimate GDP and check the robustness. Using inter\--calibrated nights lights data to estimate the GDP growth does not affect these conclusions. The analysis suggests that there may be political nepotism in late-career period of provincial leaders, addressing one key factor impetus behind the political appointment and exchange of leading cadres in autocracy.