Political cycles in Chinese urban water tariff adjustment
Xun Wu et al.
What the paper says
Cities worldwide struggle to price utility services efficiently under political constraints. This paper investigates how political cycles shape the timing of water tariff adjustments, using data from 252 Chinese cities over the period 2007–2019. We show that local officials systematically defer tariff adjustments during politically sensitive periods, particularly in the months before and during municipal political events. The magnitude of this effect varies across event types and across regions with different water resource endowments, with the probability of adjustment falling by as much as 83% relative to the baseline rate. These findings advance the literature on utility pricing by demonstrating that political constraints operate not only through price levels but also through the timing of adjustments—a dimension with direct implications for infrastructure investment and cost recovery. The results underscore the need for governance mechanisms that can better insulate routine pricing decisions from short-term political pressures. • Chinese local officials time water tariff hike s to avoid politically sensitiv ity, delaying before and during the People's Congress. • H igh-frequency evidence from monthly city-level panel captures timing dynamics invisible in annual data. • C omplete “suppress-recover” cycle is documented : anticipatory avoidance of adjustments before events, compensatory surge afterward. • H eterogeneous effects: varies by the event type and moderated by local economic pressures like water scarcity.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.