Fuel economy standards have been implemented worldwide to improve the fuel efficiency of vehicles for decades, while the attribute-based design provides regulatory loopholes for automakers’ compliance. Based on detailed vehicle model-level data in China, a bunching analysis is used to explore...

In March 2011, China’s central government set a new challenging target of reducing its energy intensity by 16% during 2011–2015, after it had achieved a reduction of 19.1% during 2006–2010. And this new target was assigned to provincial authorities in August 2011. However, China’s...