Climate policy in emerging economies: Evidence from China’s Low-Carbon City Pilot
评估中国低碳城市试点对城市人均二氧化碳排放和碳排放强度的影响，发现该政策在2003-2017年间未产生显著效果，表明有效环境政策需要透明、可量化的目标和可信的执行。
In this paper, we assess the effectiveness of early climate policy in emerging economies by causally evaluating the impact of China’s Low-carbon City Pilot (LCCP) on city-level per-capita CO2 emissions and CO2 intensity of GDP over the period 2003–2017. The idiosyncrasies of the policy design pose significant challenges for causal identification, which we overcome within a synthetic control framework. Contrary to previous contributions, our results suggest that the LCCP had no significant impact on either carbon emissions or intensity. The main takeaway of our empirical investigation is that even in emerging economies, effective environmental policy requires transparent, quantifiable targets, and credible enforcement.