This paper examines how air pollution affects the distribution of labor income within firms. We build a within-firm incentive model and show that air pollution, treated as an exogenous shock, reduces production efficiency and increases operating uncertainty. In response, firms compress both employee and executive compensation. Because executive pay carries a larger weight on performance- and equity-based components and is therefore more sensitive to profit volatility, it declines by more, mechanically narrowing within-firm pay dispersion. At the same time, rank-and-file wages display downward rigidity. The result is a “synchronized decline with sharper cuts at the top,” a form of spurious equality. Using 2014–2022 data on non-financial A-share listed firms in China, we find that a 1% increase in air pollution is associated with a 0.37% average decline in labor income. Effects are stronger in labor-intensive firms and in firms with weaker unions. Two-stage least squares estimates indicate real consequences: talent outflows and reduced innovation. By linking air quality to wage setting, human capital, and innovation, our results reveal a sustainability channel through which pollution undermines decent work and inclusive growth—issues of global relevance for urban economies. The mechanisms we document are likely to generalize beyond China and inform integrated policies that combine environmental regulation with labor-market and innovation policy to support a just and sustainable transition.

This study draws on 37,754 individual samples from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) covering 2011 to 2019, combined with county-level air pollution data and thermal inversion as an instrumental variable, to systematically examine the impact of air pollution on residents’ subjective well-being, its underlying mechanisms, and regional heterogeneity. The results show that air pollution significantly reduces residents’ well-being, with notable variation across pollutants, regions, and groups. Specifically, a 1% increase in PM _2.5 and PM ₁₀ concentrations decreases subjective well-being by 0.59% and 2.30%, respectively. Regionally, residents in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, central China, and urban areas are more vulnerable to air pollution, while at the group level, middle-aged individuals, the highly educated, and males show stronger responsiveness. Mechanism analysis further reveals that air pollution undermines subjective well-being primarily by deteriorating physical health and intensifying public risk perception. Overall, this study provides robust empirical evidence on the negative externalities of air pollution and offers important policy implications for enhancing residents’ well-being, strengthening environmental governance, and promoting sustainable regional development.

We study the effects of school-age nutritional support using China’s Nutrition Improvement Program for Rural Compulsory Education Students. We link seven waves of the China Family Panel Studies from 2010 to 2022 to county-level program rollout and exploit policy-generated variation in cumulative eligibility across pilot counties, school cohorts, and survey waves. In a person fixed-effect design, one additional completed year of eligibility increases height-for-age by 0.101 standard deviations, reduces stunting by 2.7 percentage points, and raises mathematics and word-test scores by 0.080 and 0.061 standard deviations. The nutritional response is not a uniform increase in body mass: BMI-for-age declines without an increase in thinness, while normal weight becomes more common and obesity falls. Improvements in physical development are substantially larger with longer accumulated exposure, whereas cognitive gains are positive but less monotonic across exposure durations. Cohort-placebo tests show no systematic post-rollout changes among children already ineligible when the program began, and the main estimates are similar when treatment status is measured near rollout and pilot counties are compared with adjacent counties. Downstream educational effects are less systematic. Overall, the results show that sustained nutritional support during the school years can improve both physical growth and cognitive performance.

This paper examines how disruptions to product market access affect staged VC financing and capital allocation. We exploit China’s 2018 suspension of online game license approvals as an exogenous shock. Synthetic difference-in-differences estimates show that core VC/PE financing in the online game industry fell by about 44.8%, with larger declines in growth-stage and follow-on financing. Firm-level evidence shows a lower probability of obtaining subsequent financing, while firms with greater pre-shock reliance on game licenses experienced more persistent reductions in product approvals. At the investor level, prior game investors reduced allocations to online games and shifted investment toward adjacent digital industries. We propose a commercialization–financing stage mismatch mechanism: the suspension delayed commercialization milestones while financing cycles continued. Our findings show how regulatory frictions can disrupt staged financing and reallocate venture capital across industries.