This paper describes a new incentive-based pollution control program in China in which the environmental performance of firms is rated and reported to the public. Firms are rated from best to worst using five colors - green, blue, yellow, red, and black - and the ratings are disseminated to the...

Using China’s environmental tax reform in 2018 as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper identifies the effect of raising tax rates on reducing pollution based on micro-level data of over 19 thousand firms nationwide. We estimate that for every unit of tax rate increase, the discharge...

Polluting firms' relocation results in the efficiency loss of the environmental policy. This paper provides a systematic study of the water pollution relocation driven by the 11th Five-Year Plan pollution reduction mandates in China. We explore a unique dataset of the environmental statistics,...