Title: Pollution for Promotion
Author: Ruixue Jia

Education
PhD, Stockholm University, Sweden, 2013 (economics)
MA, Peking University, China, 2007 (economics)
BA, China Youth College for Economics, China, 2004 (economics)

Biography
Ruixue Jia is an Assistant Professor in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UC San Diego. She received her PhD from the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University.
Ruixue’s research revolves around two themes: (1) using organizational theory to understand the incentives of politicians and their impacts on growth, the environment and workplace safety; and (2) investigating the importance of historical events that have implications for current economic development. Along the theme of political incentives, she has studied what determines the selection of politicians in China and how the incentives of politicians affect pollution and coalmine accidents. Along the theme of economic history, she studied the long-run development paths of treaty ports. She has also looked at the impact of weather shocks on peasant revolts using historical data.

Abstract
This paper provides evidence on the impact of political incentives on the environment
using the case of China's pollution. Guided by a simple career concerns model,
I examine empirically how promotion incentives of provincial governors aect pollution.
To nd exogenous promotion incentives, I explore within-governor variation in
connections with key ocials due to reshuing at the center and document the fact
that connections are complementary to economic performance for governors' promotion.
Evidence from both ocial information and satellite data conrms the model
prediction that connections increase pollution. Auxiliary predictions of the model are
also conrmed by the data.