Donglan Zha

Economic growth and particulate pollution concentrations in China

Though the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) was originally developed to model the ambient concentrations of pollutants, most subsequent applications have focused on pollution emissions. Yet, it seems more likely that economic growth could eventually reduce the concentrations of local pollutants than emissions. We examine the role of income, convergence, and time related factors in explaining recent changes in PM 2.5 and PM 10 particulate pollution in 50 Chinese cities using new measures of ambient air quality that the Chinese government has published only since the beginning of 2013. We use a recently developed model that relates the rate of change of pollution to the growth of the economy and other factors as well as the traditional environmental Kuznets curve model. Pollution fell sharply from 2013 to 2014. We show that economic growth, convergence, and time effects all served to lower the level of pollution. The results also demonstrate the relationship between the two modeling approaches.

Effects of technical and allocative inefficiencies on energy and nonenergy elasticities: an analysis of energy-intensive industries in China

ABSTRACT Elasticity of substitution is traditionally estimated while ignoring technical and allocative inefficiencies, which could bias the estimates. We estimate elasticity of substitution for Chinese energy-intensive sectors by incorporating these inefficiencies. The results show most of the sectors are low substitutes between input factors and stress important differences among energy-intensive sectors. Concerning the cross-price elasticity for energy, with respect to capital (labor), the sectors are mainly characterized by weak substitutability or complementary. These imply the production structure is quite rigid and capital cannot be so readily used as a substitute for energy.

Decoupling and decomposing analysis of construction industry’s energy consumption in China

The construction industry is one of the key industries for driving energy conservation in China. Decoupling of the construction industry development from energy consumption has become the focus of the green economy. This study applied an elastic decoupling model to explore the decoupling status between energy consumption and output value in China’s construction industry. Log-Mean Divisia Index was utilized to explain the factors influencing decoupling from the perspectives of labor, efficiency, and investment. Results indicate that weak decoupling is the main status during 2000–2015. This means Chinese construction industrial development is no longer occurring at the expense of faster energy consumption growth. The labor factor is the dominant factor in the appearance of the decoupling status, and its cumulative increase impact on energy productivity is 230%, followed by efficiency factors (135%). Investment factors fail to drive the construction industry to a decoupling development state in most years, but there have been improvements during the 12th “Five-Year Plan.”

An event study analysis of price adjustment of refined oil and air quality in China

Since marketization of the refined oil price, the Chinese government has used refined oil price adjustments to control air pollution. Using an event study analysis, we examine whether these price adjustments have impacted air quality. We test the abnormal returns of 12 price adjustments between 2014 and 2015 in 51 major cities of China. The results show that the impact on air quality of refined oil price decreases is larger than the impact of oil price increases. Although results indicate air quality has deteriorated, the impact is insignificant for most of the cities. Consequently, we conclude that price suspension of refined oil has had a negligible impact on air quality. This policy is not a viable method to improve the air quality in the short run.