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With the rapid development of Chengdu’s economy, the problem of air pollution has gradually drawn attention by scholars. Based on the time series data covers 2014 through 2019 of Chengdu, this research investigates the seasonal difference in air pollution and the possible influence of six pollutants on air pollution. The results indicated that there is a significant seasonal difference of air pollution in Chengdu and air pollutants are mainly fine particulate matter and ozone. Based on the findings, the government might consider achieve precise emission reductions for the pollution sources of PM2.5 and O3.

With rapid urbanization and industrialization, the population of metropolis in China is increasing. Previous studies suggest that population agglomeration would have a significant impact on air pollution in cities. Using a panel dataset of 30 provincial capital cities during 2013-2017, as well as days of air quality equal to or above Grade II as air pollution indicators, the results show that an increase of population density will improve air quality in large cities. Through the mediation effect test, this paper found that tertiary industry is the mediation channel of population agglomeration to reduce air pollution. An increase of population density in big cities is conductive to increasing the proportion of tertiary industry, thereby reducing the proportion of seriously polluting secondary industry, and reducing air pollution.

Chinese overcapacity in the steel and coal industry has been on the rise since 2013, which leads to the misallocation of resources and decreases in production efficiency. In 2015, the Chinese central government adopted a series of de-capacity policies to resolve excess capacity and improve corporate profitability. However, there is scant evidence on the impacts of de-capacity policies on the firm profitability. Based on the data from Chinese listed companies in the steel and coal industry, this study constructs the difference-in-difference (DID) method to investigate the effects of the de-capacity policy on the profitability of listed companies in the steel and coal industry empirically. The results show that the de-capacity policy significantly increases the return on equity (ROE) of the experimental group, which is higher than that of the control group by 12.4%. That is partially because of the improvement in gross profit margin, management efficiency, and return on manpower due to the de-capacity policy. This study offers new evidence on the efficiency of China’s de-capacity policy toward the steel and coal industries through data at the enterprise level.

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