This paper investigates the geographic concentration of water pollution. Chinese firm-level data shows that water pollution emissions are unevenly distributed across regions. Using China’s accession to the World Trade Organization as the exogenous shock, we identify a negative causal effect of...

Tax policies are implemented with significant degree of distortion across firms. Using data on Chinese firms' value-added tax (VAT) payment, we empirically investigate whether export liberalization affects the within-industry VAT rate dispersion across firms, a direct measure of distortion....

This paper investigates the effect of export liberalization on firm-level water pollution. With data on Chinese firm-level water pollution around China's WTO accession, we identify a negative causal effect of export liberalization on firm-level water-pollution intensity utilizing the exogenous...