| In the past 40 years of reform and opening up,China has created a great miracle in the history of human economy.In the process of rapid economic development,local governments and their officials have played an important role: under the background of political centralization accompanied by fiscal decentralization,the promotion incentive with GDP as the core causes fierce competition among local government officials,thus promoting regional economic growth(Li & Zhou,2005;Xu Xianxiang,et al.,2007;Zhou Li’an,2007).At the same time,this incentive mode of competition for growth forces local officials to focus on the short-term rapid improvement of economic indicators within their jurisdiction,while ignoring the long-term sustainable development of the region,resulting in the coexistence of high growth,high consumption and environmental damage.In response to this problem,the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put the construction of ecological civilization into the general layout of "five in one" construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics;the report of the 19 th National Congress repeatedly mentioned "ecology" for up to 42 times,raising it to a new height of national strategic development.The central government attaches great importance to environmental protection,but the environmental pollution in some areas is still serious,and the air quality is not optimistic.Industrial enterprises,as the main consumers of energy and the main manufacturers of environmental problems,have an unshirkable responsibility for environmental protection.The existing research mainly discusses the relevant factors that affect the environmental protection investment of enterprises from the aspects of external environmental regulations and internal corporate governance,rarely involves the political factors such as official turnover.Based on the quasi natural experiment of the turnover of municipal officials in China,this paper collects and sorts out the data of the turnover of municipal Party committee secretary and the environmental protection investment of local listed industrial enterprises from 2008 to 2017,and studies the political uncertainty caused by the turnover of officials and the impact of the temporal and spatial differences on the environmental protection investment of enterprises by using the methods of unbalanced panel and placebo test.It is found that the increase of political uncertainty urges enterprises to increase environmental protection investment temporarily,but this investment is not sustainable.Specifically,the investment in environmental protection of enterprises increased significantly only in the year when the municipal Party committee secretary was replaced.After further considering the heterogeneity of official turnover,the change of environmental protection investment also shows differences.From the perspective of spatial heterogeneity,when the official turnover occurs in the eastern region or when the new municipal Party secretary is transferred from another place,the investment in environmental protection of enterprises increases more obviously.From the perspective of timing heterogeneity,when the official turnover occurs in the "end of office" stage of the five-year plan or "the term of office of the outgoing official is shorter",the environmental protection investment of enterprises increases significantly.In terms of the nature of property rights,when the property rights of listed enterprises belong to the local area,the change of officials has a more obvious impact on the growth of environmental protection investment of enterprises.The conclusion of the study provides a new perspective and evidence for the analysis of how enterprises deal with political uncertainty in China’s political environment,and also provides some inspiration for understanding the effect of China’s official appointment and exchange system and improving the system design. |
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