Environmental jurisdiction and energy efficiency: Evidence from China's establishment of environmental courts

This paper investigates the effects of environmental jurisdiction on energy efficiencies by exploring the quasi-natural experiment of China's establishment of environmental courts. The results of the staggered DID method show the following: (1) compared with the control group, the establishment of environmental courts results in a significant reduction of about 0.8% in local energy intensity, which is the ratio of energy consumption to GDP, and (2) three channels explain the effects, namely, improving the trial efficiency of energy cases, stimulating local bureaucrats' performance of enforcing environment and energy policies, and promoting innovations of energy-saving technologies. The results of Goodman-Bacon decompositions and a set of robust event study show that the staggered DID method is robust.