“The enduring impacts of early life exposure to heatwaves on climate governance”
published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
by Profs. Jingbo Cui (Duke Kunshan University), Chunhua Wang (Shanghai Jiaotong University) and Zhenxuan Wang (North Carolina State University)
This paper examines the enduring effects of early-life exposure to heatwaves on the climate governance of local political leaders. We compile detailed biographical information on city mayors and party secretaries in China and combine it with comprehensive data on carbon emissions, economic outcomes, and policies for over 2800 counties from 2000 to 2017. We find that counties governed by officials who experienced heatwaves in their early life exhibit about a 1% reduction in carbon emissions relative to those governed by officials without such exposure. The effect is driven primarily by mayors, officials with more intense or repeated heatwave exposure, and cities with less industrialized economic structures. Further analysis provides suggestive evidence that these officials are more likely to implement carbon pricing and emission abatement policies, as well as policies with clear targets, enforcement, and mandatory language. Their governance reshapes local economic structures by constraining the activity and entry of emission-intensive manufacturing firms, a pattern further supported by firm-level evidence of lower carbon emissions.
“A model of participatory persuasion”
published in the Games and Economic Behavior
by Profs. Liuchun Deng (Duke Kunshan University) and Yufeng Sun (Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
This paper develops a formal model of participatory persuasion. The paper studies how a political regime that controls information may nevertheless benefit from allowing citizens to communicate with one another in limited ways, either among peers or within families across generations. The main finding is paradoxical: compared with a setting in which citizens do not communicate at all, limited communication can prolong the survival of a regime. When citizens exchange personal experiences only within small circles, they may receive mixed signals about the regime’s performance. These mixed signals can make citizens less certain that political change is warranted and can therefore make official information control more effective. The paper also shows that this effect depends critically on the scope and structure of communication. If communication becomes broad enough for citizens to aggregate information accurately, the regime’s ability to manipulate beliefs sharply declines. The analysis therefore highlights a subtle distinction between limited spaces for communication and genuinely open information exchange.
