CLEARING THE SKY BY ESTABLISHING ENVIRONMENTAL COURTS: EVIDENCE FROM A QUASI-NATURAL EXPERIMENT IN CHINA

The rule of law in environmental governance is the foundation for achieving high-quality development.Using the establishment of an environment and resources division (ERD) within the intermediate people's courts of prefecture-level cities in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this study constructs a multi-period difference-in-differences model to systematically examine the impact of environmental courts on regional air quality using panel data from 276 cities from 2014 to 2020.Results show that environmental courts can significantly reduce the regional air quality index (AQI), and this finding is strongly supported by a series of robustness checks.Furthermore, environmental courts reduce regional air pollution by improving environmental judicial efficiency, promoting citizens' environmental participation, and fostering regional technological transformation.Finally, environmental courts have stronger effects on AQI in resource-based cities as well as in cities where the mayors have been internally promoted and are 50 years old or younger.These findings provides support for environmental judicial specialization reform in China.