This article provides new evidence that fiscal decentralization has supported economic development by incentiving cities to provide more sewage infrastructure. As a result of the 1994 tax reform, Chinese cities retained different shares of their value-added tax (VAT). Exploiting the persistence...

This paper uses unique data on daily air pollution concentrations over the period 2001-2010 to test for manipulation in self-reported data by Chinese cities. First, we employ a discontinuity test to detect evidence consistent with data manipulation. Then, we propose a panel matching approach to...