Informed Enforcement: Lessons from Pollution Monitoring in China
研究利用中国空气污染监测的引入，发现实时监测政策结果能改善现有法规的执法，包括增加对企业的执法、提高执法精准度并减少污染，且效果受官员绩效激励驱动。
Government regulations are often imperfectly enforced by public officials. In this study, we exploit the introduction of air pollution monitors in China to investigate whether real-time monitoring of policy outcomes affects the enforcement of existing regulations. Using assignment criteria established by the central government and new georeferenced data on local enforcement activities, we show that monitoring (i) increases enforcement against local firms, (ii) improves the targeting of enforcement, and (iii) reduces aggregate pollution. These effects are driven by officials facing performance incentives and are stronger when there is limited scope for data manipulation, suggesting that real-time monitoring improves top-down accountability.