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/lp/university-of-chicago-press/a-censored-maximum-likelihood-approach-to-quantifying-manipulation-in-yWxEPHsdWa
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Copyright
- © 2020 by The Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. All rights reserved.
- ISSN
- 2333-5955
- eISSN
- 2333-5963
- DOI
- 10.1086/709649
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
Data manipulation around cutoff points is observed in economics broadly and in environmental and resource economics in particular. This paper develops a simple and tractable censored maximum likelihood approach to quantify the degree of manipulation in China’s air pollution data around the “blue-sky day” cutoff. We construct annual measures of manipulation for 111 Chinese cities. For Beijing, we estimate 4%–16.8% of manipulation among reported blue-sky days annually, which translate to an estimated total of 208.1 manipulated blue-sky days between 2001 and 2010. For the remaining cities reporting pollution data over the 10-year period, we estimate a 93.9 average for the total number of manipulated blue-sky days with a 395.9 maximum. Using LASSO shrinkage, we examine the relationship between manipulation and local official characteristics, and find a positive correlation between manipulation and having an elite-educated party secretary, robust to numerous checks. Further empirical analysis suggests that promotion considerations may help explain this finding.
Journal
Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists – University of Chicago Press
Published: Sep 1, 2020