The opposite innovation impacts of air and water pollution regulations: Evidence from the total emissions control policy in China

IF 2.9 3区 经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS
Yanyan Gao , Jianghuai Zheng
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Abstract

This paper uses a unique firm-level data set from China’s two most developed regions, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and the Pearl River Delta (PRD), to examine the effects of environmental regulations on innovation. Variations in air and water pollution reduction plans under the Total Emissions Control Policy from the 10th to the 12th Five-Year Plans (2001–2015) are explored to measure the stringency of environmental regulations faced by industrial firms. To alleviate endogeneity concerns, we calculate city-level fair pollution reduction volumes which rely only on each city’s contribution to national pollution emissions in the base years and use them as instrumental variables of reduction plans. The two-stage least square estimations reveal that while air pollution regulation (APR) motivates industrial firms to innovate, water pollution regulation (WPR) hinders firm innovation. We confirm the opposite effects by estimating the impact on entrepreneurs’ perceptions of the importance of innovation in industrial firms’ development. Heterogeneity effect analysis shows that APR also hinders innovation in heavily air-polluting industries and state-owned firms, and WPR produces a decreasing innovation-hindering effect over time, which is larger in the YRD region than in the PRD region. We interpret the opposite impacts with the fact that water pollution discharges are more equally distributed across industries than air pollution emissions, resulting in more pervasive and stringent WPR.

大气和水污染法规对创新的反向影响:来自中国排放总量控制政策的证据
本文利用中国两个最发达地区--长江三角洲(YRD)和珠江三角洲(PRD)--独特的企业级数据集来研究环境法规对创新的影响。研究探讨了 "十五 "至 "十二五"(2001-2015 年)期间在总量控制政策下大气和水污染减排计划的变化,以衡量工业企业所面临的环境法规的严格程度。为缓解内生性问题,我们仅根据各城市在基准年对全国污染排放的贡献率计算城市级公平污染减排量,并将其作为减排计划的工具变量。两阶段最小二乘法估计结果表明,空气污染监管(APR)会激励工业企业创新,而水污染监管(WPR)则会阻碍企业创新。我们通过估计企业家对创新在工业企业发展中的重要性的认识所产生的影响,证实了相反的效果。异质性效应分析表明,大气污染防治法也会阻碍空气污染严重的行业和国有企业的创新,而水污染防治法对创新的阻碍作用会随着时间的推移而递减,长三角地区的影响大于珠三角地区。我们认为,与大气污染排放相比,水污染排放在各行业中的分布更为均衡,因此水污染排放总量限制更为普遍和严格,从而产生了相反的影响。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
4.70
自引率
9.40%
发文量
90
期刊介绍: The Journal of Asian Economics provides a forum for publication of increasingly growing research in Asian economic studies and a unique forum for continental Asian economic studies with focus on (i) special studies in adaptive innovation paradigms in Asian economic regimes, (ii) studies relative to unique dimensions of Asian economic development paradigm, as they are investigated by researchers, (iii) comparative studies of development paradigms in other developing continents, Latin America and Africa, (iv) the emerging new pattern of comparative advantages between Asian countries and the United States and North America.
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