学术沙龙预告 | 李蕾：增长受阻时，污染会加剧吗？——贸易战、环境执法与污染问题

摘要：When Growth Stumbles, Pollute? Trade War, Environmental Enforcement, and Pollution

CIDEG

学术沙龙第203期

清华大学产业发展与环境治理研究中心（CIDEG）学术沙龙

When Growth Stumbles, Pollute?

Trade War, Environmental Enforcement,

and Pollution

讲座信息

【时间】9月25日（周四）下午15:00-17:00

【地点】清华大学公共管理学院510会议室

【主题】When Growth Stumbles, Pollute? Trade War, Environmental Enforcement, and Pollution

【会议形式】现场会议

【语言】中文

【主持人】张明昂清华大学公共管理学院副教授、CIDEG副研究员

【主讲人】李蕾德国哥廷根大学经济与工商管理学院和人文学院教授

【点评嘉宾】

刘梦迪对外经济贸易大学国际经济贸易学院教授

张鹏龙 清华大学公共管理学院副教授、CIDEG兼职研究员

主讲内容

This paper studies the short-term trade-off between economic growth and environmental governance from the perspective of political incentives. In the context of international trade conflicts, we use the U.S.-China trade war as a natural experiment and find that higher U.S. tariffs worsen air quality in China. The city-level analysis shows that a 1% increase in the tariff burden leads to 0.9% and 0.7% increases in SO2 and PM2.5, respectively. Firm-level emission data generate similar results. Interestingly, the hourly monitor-level air quality data suggests that the pollution increases are concentrated at night. We hypothesize that the surprising findings can be largely attributed to the lenient environmental policies adopted by local governments when faced with the risks of economic downturn. We provide suggestive evidence that cities more exposed to the U.S. tariffs attach less emphasis on environmental regulations in local government reports and charge fewer fines on firms violating environmental regulations. Cities with native and older party secretaries and areas closer to province boundaries experience a less severe increase in pollution during the trade war. Our findings are relevant as China scrambles to maintain growth in the face of economic headwinds.

01 主讲人

李蕾

德国哥廷根大学经济与工商管理学院和人文学院教授

Lei Li is a professor at the University of Göttingen, Germany. She is affiliated with CESifo, IZA, and ZEW. She got her Ph.D. from Tsinghua University in 2016. Before joining Göttingen, she was an assistant professor at the University of Mannheim in Germany. Her research interests center on international trade, particularly its intersections with labor, environment, and political economy. Her works have been published in the Journal of International Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Energy Economics, Economic Letters, and etc.

02 点评嘉宾

刘梦迪