The Leading Officials' Accountability Audit Of Natural Resources And Environmental Governance Efficiency Of Local Government

In recent years,China's industrialization has developed rapidly,and a relatively complete industrialization system has been formed.And environmental pollution,as an inevitable companion to industrial development,was pushed from behind the scenes to the front.Environmental pollution problems such as smog,water pollution,soil pollution,and marine pollution have become the focus of widespread public attention.The environmental carrying capacity has reached the upper limit,and the treatment of environmental pollution is urgent.As a public good with significant negative externalities,environmental pollution is an important channel to eliminate negative externalities.The implementation of leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources has strengthened the environmental protection responsibilities and accountability of local governments in the form of a system,prompting them to strengthen the management of environmental pollution issues in their jurisdictions and implement the central environmental protection policy.Will the implementation of the pilot of leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources promote the improvement of local government environmental governance efficiency? Is the system long-term or short-sighted? Are there regional differences in the implementation of the pilot of leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources? This is the main concern of this article.This article takes the micro-panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2011 to2016 as a research sample,and based on the institutional background of the leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources,this paper uses the Difference-inDifference method to empirically test the implementation of the pilot of leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources for local governments The impact of environmental governance efficiency,the study found that the implementation of the leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources has significantly promoted the improvement of local government environmental governance efficiency in pilot areas,and this promotion has a long-term effect.Further research found that the implementation effect of leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources has regional differences.Compared with regions with better institutional environments,the leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources have significantly improved the local government's environmental governance efficiency in areas with poor institutional environments.In addition,the pilot implementation of leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources on the efficiency of local government environmental governance will also be affected by the positioning of cities.Compared with environmental protection model cities,the pilot of leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources has significantly improved non-environment-friendly model cities Environmental governance efficiency.After considering the effects of sample selection bias,the environmental protection interview mechanism,the implementation of the new environmental protection law,the central environmental supervision,and the lagging role of government audit governance,the research conclusions of this paper are still reliable.In summary,the innovation and research contributions of this article are mainly reflected in the following three aspects: First,the innovation of research perspective.Existing researches on the leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources are mainly based on theoretical discussions,and there is a lack of empirical research on large sample of economic consequences of pilot implementation.In the field of environmental pollution control,the existing literature has only examined the environmental governance effects of the leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources in terms of fiscal environmental investment,environmental investment of enterprises,and air pollution prevention.The impact of audits on the efficiency of local government environmental governance.This paper studies the impact of the implementation of the pilot of leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources on the efficiency of local government environmental governance,which enriches the research literature on the economic consequences and environmental pollution governance factors of the leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources,At the same time,it also provides empirical evidence for the national governance of audit services.Second,in combination with the distribution characteristics of China 's natural resource assets and the differences in economic development levels in various regions,this paper further tests whether there are regional differences in the local government 's environmental governance for pilot of leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources,and for environmental protection model cities and non-environmental protection.Are there significant differences in model cities? At present,no scholar has investigated whether there are regional differences in the economic consequences of the leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources.This article supplements the research literature in this area.Third,in the robustness testing section,this article considers other factors that may affect the governance of environmental pollution during the pilot period of the leadership audit of natural resources assets leaving the audit,such as,the environmental protection interview mechanism,the promulgation of a new environmental protection law,and the first round of central environmental protection supervision,Existing research literature does not exclude these possible policy interference factors.In order to ensure the reliability of the research results,this article considers these influencing factors and considers the lag of the government audit governance function.