The Chinese government has stepped up its anti-corruption efforts since 2013; the National Energy Administration (NEA), an energy regulatory agency, has been hard hit by corruption. This paper analyzes the impact of government corruption on energy efficiency (EE) from a perspective of energy regulations and also a mechanism of the impact of corruption on EE, and then adopts statistical methods to estimate the impact of corruption on EE in China. The results show that government corruption generally has a negative effect on EE in China. The establishment of dispatched energy regulatory agencies in eastern China can significantly reduce the adverse effects of corruption on EE. Furthermore, a single threshold effect was found between corruption and EE. Finally, based on the results of an empirical analysis, suggestions for a constructive policy are put forward.

Collective action is a basic premise for the effective protection of open public resources. The characteristics and the environment of open public resources, however, also constitute many “bottlenecks” to collective action, which means that there is a “paradoxical” relationship between collective action and open public resources. Therefore, the key to protecting open public resources is to construct a collective action mechanism that can break these “bottlenecks”. In the case of three different forms of contract system implemented by Yongjia County, Zhejiang Province, China for the fishery resources of Nanxi River, the first two contracts were caught up in the “tragedy of the commons” and a legality crisis because they did not form a collective action mechanism to protect resources. The sub-contract with the aim of protecting and resting the Nanxi River started in 2005 and has constructed a collective action mechanism of consensus, sharing, common participation, joint discussion and co-management, and worked out a rationale of how to form collective action in the process of open public resource protection, which is worth exploring and promoting. This study aims to explore the bottlenecks which limit collective action in the process of resource protection, and to provide practical policy recommendation for solving them.