Do Official Exchange Affect Local Environmental Protection?

Official exchange is an important system reform measures for the coordinated development of China’s overall regional development and which is still a work in progress.Environment is vital to human survival and development of society.Environment problem is the most important livelihood issue.So it appears especially essential to study that how official exchange affect local environment protection.There are a few literatures studying the relationship between the official exchange and environment protection.And most of them stay at a preliminary theoretical exploration stage.The result of this paper enriches the study about the exchange of officials,and provides a theoretical basis and practical significance for the development of China’s political system and environmental protection.Therefore this paper takes use of panel data to test the influence of official exchange to environment protection by difference in difference.The panel data contains the basis of data between provincial governor and provincial party secretary of all the 31 provinces of China during 2007-2014.It is found that the exchange of officials is conducive to the development of the environmental protection industry,especially when the new officer worked in the central department or central enterprises.But this positive influence only shows in the long time.Generally it will take a long time that the effort of environmental management worked.So the influence of official exchange will take a time to be paid off.It is robust after replacing the initial dependence by variables which express the result of officer’s effort.