NADS Held 3rd "New Political Economy" Series of Lectures

On October 17th, the frontier lecture of “New Political Economy” sponsored by the National Academy of Development and Strategy of Renmin University of China was held in the 2310 classroom on the No.2 Public Teaching Building. Associate Professor Li Xiaojun from the Department of Politics at Columbia University in Canada reported on his latest research with his collaborators: "The Politics of Firm-level Environmental Regulatory Actions in China: Does Fixed Intensity Affect Punitive Actions and Firm Environmental Ratings?"

This article examines how the extent of Chinese companies' fixed assets affects local governments' implementation of environmental protection regulations, thereby revealing the local government's strategic behavior in environmental regulation. In theory, on the one hand, the high-level firmness of fixed assets makes it difficult for enterprises to relocate, so when local governments are to implement higher-intensity environmental regulations, enterprises cannot effectively "use their feet to vote". On the other hand, the firm's fixed assets firmness are high, and the entry barriers of the industry in which the company is located are high. Therefore, enterprises have more opportunities to obtain monopoly rents, so that enterprises have more resources for bribing the regulatory authorities. In the aspect of experience study, the author took Jiangsu province as an example: in Jiangsu, monitored polluting enterprises will be taken two kinds of measures, one is pollution fines, the other one is environmental ratings. It has found that companies with high fixed assets are more likely to be fined, but environmental ratings are higher. These empirical studies validate the above theoretical predictions.

The lecture "New Political Economy" was hosted by Zhang Yuxiao, a research fellow of NADS. Nie Huihua, deputy dean of the NADS, Yin Zhendong, associate professor of the School of Economics of the Central University of Finance and Economics, and Shen Ji, teacher of Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, PhD students in business economics at the School of Economics and teachers and students from other departments attended the seminar.