IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v12y2020i4p1607-d323321.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Did Haze Pollution Harm the Quality of Economic Development?—An Empirical Study Based on China’s PM2.5 Concentrations

Author

Listed:
  • Qing Zhao

    (School of Economics and Commerce, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Zhongshan Institute, Zhongshan 528400, China)

  • Chih-Hung Yuan

    (School of Economics and Commerce, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Zhongshan Institute, Zhongshan 528400, China)

Abstract

Based on the PM2.5 haze data of China’s provinces between 2004–2016, this paper systematically explores the impact of haze pollution on the quality of China’s economic development, as well as its transmission mechanisms. This is achieved by measuring the quality of economic development with total factor productivity. Furthermore, this paper innovatively uses precipitation as an instrumental variable for mitigating the endogeneity of the haze pollution variable, by which the impact of haze pollution on the quality of China’s economic development is estimated within the framework of two-stage least squares. It is found that: the haze pollution has degraded the quality of China’s economic development significantly; the labor supply loss, counter urbanization and human capital disruption are the three major transmission channels through which haze pollution affects the quality of China’s economic development; strengthening government’s environmental management is effective in mitigating the adverse impact of haze pollution on the economic development quality; and that China’s unique fiscal decentralization system has exacerbated the negative economic effect of haze pollution. The policy implications of this paper are as follows: Improvement of economic development quality is a prerequisite for the transition of economic development mode; and the governmental management of haze is conducive to enhancing the quality of atmospheric environment and economic development, and to promoting the high-quality development of the Chinese economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Qing Zhao & Chih-Hung Yuan, 2020. "Did Haze Pollution Harm the Quality of Economic Development?—An Empirical Study Based on China’s PM2.5 Concentrations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-16, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:4:p:1607-:d:323321
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/4/1607/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/4/1607/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tatyana Deryugina & Garth Heutel & Nolan H. Miller & David Molitor & Julian Reif, 2019. "The Mortality and Medical Costs of Air Pollution: Evidence from Changes in Wind Direction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(12), pages 4178-4219, December.
    2. Fernando Broner & Paula Bustos & Vasco Carvalho, 2011. "Sources of comparative advantage in polluting industries," Economics Working Papers 1331, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Dec 2019.
    3. Tientao, A. & Legros, D. & Pichery, M.C., 2016. "Technology spillover and TFP growth: A spatial Durbin model," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 21-31.
    4. Richard T. Carson & Phoebe Koundouri & Céline Nauges, 2010. "Arsenic Mitigation in Bangladesh: A Household Labor Market Approach," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 93(2), pages 407-414.
    5. Yihao Zhang & Yu Jiang & Yongji Guo, 2017. "The effects of haze pollution on stock performances: evidence from China," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(23), pages 2226-2237, May.
    6. Eli Berman & Linda T. M. Bui, 2001. "Environmental Regulation And Productivity: Evidence From Oil Refineries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(3), pages 498-510, August.
    7. Kenneth Y. Chay & Michael Greenstone, 2003. "The Impact of Air Pollution on Infant Mortality: Evidence from Geographic Variation in Pollution Shocks Induced by a Recession," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 1121-1167.
    8. Cole, Matthew A. & Elliott, Robert J.R. & Okubo, Toshihiro, 2010. "Trade, environmental regulations and industrial mobility: An industry-level study of Japan," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 1995-2002, August.
    9. Christopher R. Knittel & Douglas L. Miller & Nicholas J. Sanders, 2016. "Caution, Drivers! Children Present: Traffic, Pollution, and Infant Health," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(2), pages 350-366, May.
    10. Hering, Laura & Poncet, Sandra, 2014. "Environmental policy and exports: Evidence from Chinese cities," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 296-318.
    11. Song, Tao & Zheng, Tingguo & Tong, Lianjun, 2008. "An empirical test of the environmental Kuznets curve in China: A panel cointegration approach," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 381-392, September.
    12. Akpalu, Wisdom & Normanyo, Ametefee K., 2017. "Gold Mining Pollution and the Cost of Private Healthcare: The Case of Ghana," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 104-112.
    13. Stefano Bosi & David Desmarchelier & Lionel Ragot, 2015. "Pollution effects on labor supply and growth," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 11(4), pages 371-388, December.
    14. Younoh Kim & James Manley & Vlad Radoias, 2017. "Medium- and long-term consequences of pollution on labor supply: evidence from Indonesia," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-15, December.
    15. Yu Qin & Hongjia Zhu, 2018. "Run away? Air pollution and emigration interests in China," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(1), pages 235-266, January.
    16. Ying Su & Chunyan Lu & Xiaoqing Lin & Lianxiu Zhong & Yibin Gao & Yifan Lei, 2020. "Analysis of Spatio-temporal Characteristics and Driving Forces of Air Quality in the Northern Coastal Comprehensive Economic Zone, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-23, January.
    17. Brian R. Copeland & M. Scott Taylor, 1994. "North-South Trade and the Environment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 755-787.
    18. Jerry A. Hausman & Bart D. Ostro & David A. Wise, 1984. "Air Pollution and Lost Work," NBER Working Papers 1263, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Reppelin-Hill, Valerie, 1999. "Trade and Environment: An Empirical Analysis of the Technology Effect in the Steel Industry," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 283-301, November.
    20. Friedl, Birgit & Getzner, Michael, 2003. "Determinants of CO2 emissions in a small open economy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 133-148, April.
    21. Aligui Tientao & Diego Legros & Marie Claude Pichery, 2016. "Technology spillover and TFP growth: A spatial Durbin model," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 145, pages 21-31.
    22. Shafik, Nemat, 1994. "Economic Development and Environmental Quality: An Econometric Analysis," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 46(0), pages 757-773, Supplemen.
    23. Stefano Bosi & David Desmarchelier & Lionel Ragot, 2015. "Pollution effects on labor supply and growth," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 11(4), pages 371-388, December.
    24. Lopez Ramon, 1994. "The Environment as a Factor of Production: The Effects of Economic Growth and Trade Liberalization," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 163-184, September.
    25. Shadbegian Ronald J & Gray Wayne B, 2003. "What Determines Environmental Performance at Paper Mills? The Roles of Abatement Spending, Regulation, and Efficiency," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-20, November.
    26. Matthew E. Kahn, 2000. "Smog Reduction’s Impact on California County Growth," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 565-582, August.
    27. Jiaxiu He & Haoming Liu & Alberto Salvo, 2019. "Severe Air Pollution and Labor Productivity: Evidence from Industrial Towns in China," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 173-201, January.
    28. Cole, Matthew A., 2004. "Trade, the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental Kuznets curve: examining the linkages," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 71-81, January.
    29. Shuai Chen & Paulina Oliva & Peng Zhang, 2017. "The Effect of Air Pollution on Migration: Evidence from China," NBER Working Papers 24036, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    30. W. Walker Hanlon, 2016. "Coal Smoke and the Costs of the Industrial Revolution," NBER Working Papers 22921, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jing Jin & Duozhang Chen, 2022. "Research on the Impact of the County-to-District Reform on Environmental Pollution in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-12, May.
    2. Kai Yuan & Yabing Qin & Chenlu Wang & Zihao Li & Tingting Bai, 2023. "Balance between Smog Control and Economic Growth in China: Mechanism Analysis Based on the Effect of Green Technology Innovation," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(2), pages 1-19, January.
    3. Shaolong Zeng & Xianfan Shu & Wenxian Ye, 2022. "Total Factor Productivity and High-Quality Economic Development: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(5), pages 1-17, February.
    4. Dongdong Ma & Feng He & Guifang Li & Guangjun Deng, 2021. "Does haze pollution affect public health in China from the perspective of environmental efficiency?," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(11), pages 16343-16357, November.
    5. Weiguang Wang & Yangyang Wang, 2023. "Regional Differences, Dynamic Evolution and Driving Factors Analysis of PM 2.5 in the Yangtze River Economic Belt," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-24, February.
    6. Daxin Dong & Boyang Xu & Ning Shen & Qian He, 2021. "The Adverse Impact of Air Pollution on China’s Economic Growth," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-27, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Linfeng & Shi, Tie & Chen, Hanyi, 2023. "Air pollution and infant mortality: Evidence from China," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    2. Colmer, Jonathan & Lin, Dajun & Liu, Siying & Shimshack, Jay, 2021. "Why are pollution damages lower in developed countries? Insights from high-Income, high-particulate matter Hong Kong," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    3. Xiao Yu & Jianing Liang & Yanzhe Zhang, 2022. "Air Pollution and Settlement Intention: Evidence from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(8), pages 1-16, April.
    4. Felix Holub & Laura Hospido & Ulrich J. Wagner, 2020. "Urban air pollution and sick leaves: evidence from social security data," Working Papers 2041, Banco de España.
    5. Dinda, Soumyananda, 2004. "Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 431-455, August.
    6. Faridul, Islam & Muhammad, Shahbaz, 2012. "Is There an Environmental Kuznets Curve for Bangladesh?," MPRA Paper 38490, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 30 Apr 2012.
    7. Sabuj Kumar Mandal & Devleena Chakravarty, 2017. "Role of energy in estimating turning point of Environmental Kuznets Curve: an econometric analysis of the existing studies," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 19(2), pages 387-401, October.
    8. Nicolli, Francesco & Gilli, Marianna & Vona, Francesco, 2022. "Inequality and Climate Change: Two Problems, One Solution?," FEEM Working Papers 329340, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    9. Xia, Fan & Xing, Jianwei & Xu, Jintao & Pan, Xiaochuan, 2022. "The short-term impact of air pollution on medical expenditures: Evidence from Beijing," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    10. Liao, Liping & Du, Minzhe & Chen, Zhongfei, 2021. "Air pollution, health care use and medical costs: Evidence from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    11. Wes Austin & Stefano Carattini & John Gomez Mahecha & Michael Pesko, 2020. "Covid-19 Mortality and Contemporaneous Air Pollution," CESifo Working Paper Series 8609, CESifo.
    12. Xinming Du, 2023. "Symptom or Culprit? Social Media, Air Pollution, and Violence," CESifo Working Paper Series 10296, CESifo.
    13. Alassane DRABO, 2010. "Interrelationships between Health, Environment Quality and Economic Activity: What Consequences for Economic Convergence," Working Papers 201005, CERDI.
    14. Bridget Hoffmann & Juan Pablo Rud, 2022. "Exposure or Income? The Unequal Effects of Pollution on Daily Labor Supply," Working Papers 109, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    15. Matthew E. Kahn & Nancy Lozano‐Gracia & Maria Edisa Soppelsa, 2021. "Pollution'S Role In Reducing Urban Quality Of Life In The Developing World," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 330-347, February.
    16. Myriam BEN SAAD, 2017. "L’effet de la complexité économique sur la pollution de l’air : une autre approche de la courbe environnementale de Kuznets," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 46, pages 21-41.
    17. Ya‐Ming Liu & Chon‐Kit Ao, 2021. "Effect of air pollution on health care expenditure: Evidence from respiratory diseases," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(4), pages 858-875, April.
    18. He, Jie & Wang, Hua, 2012. "Economic structure, development policy and environmental quality: An empirical analysis of environmental Kuznets curves with Chinese municipal data," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 49-59.
    19. Fu, Shihe & Viard, V. Brian & Zhang, Peng, 2022. "Trans-boundary air pollution spillovers: Physical transport and economic costs by distance," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    20. Nguyen, Hung T. & Pham, Mia Hang, 2021. "Air pollution and behavioral biases: Evidence from stock market anomalies," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:4:p:1607-:d:323321. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.