'Effortless Perfection:' Do Chinese Cities Manipulate Air Pollution Data?
'Effortless Perfection:' Do Chinese Cities Manipulate Air Pollution Data?
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DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.2252174
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发表时间：
2014-07
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Dalia Ghanem;Junjie Zhang
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Dalia Ghanem;Junjie Zhang
本文使用2001-2010年期间每日空气污染浓度的独特数据来测试中国城市自报数据的操纵。首先，我们采用不连续性检验来检测与数据操纵一致的证据。然后，我们提出了一个面板匹配的方法来确定的条件下，可能发生的违规行为。我们发现，大约50%的城市报告了可疑的PM10污染水平，导致临界值不连续。可疑数据报告往往发生在异常最不易检测的日子。我们的研究结果表明，官方每日空气污染数据表现不佳，这提供了操纵的暗示证据。
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 identify the conditions under which irregularities may occur. We find that about 50% of cities reported dubious PM10 pollution levels that led to a discontinuity at the cut-off. Suspicious data reporting tends to occur on days when the anomaly is least detectable. Our findings indicate that the official daily air pollution data are not well behaved, which provides suggestive evidence of manipulation.