Does China's low-carbon pilot programme really take off? Evidence from land transfer of energy-intensive industry

To realise the targets for controlling greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, China has issued three batches of low-carbon pilot programme since 2010. In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of the programme from the perspective of land transfer of energy-intensive industry, by using a difference-in-differences method. We also analyze the role of the local secretary, the de facto "first-in-command" official of local government. The results...