Benchmark analysis.

Promoting utilization efficiency and sustainable energy development is crucial for achieving sustainable social development in China, the largest energy producer and consumer worldwide. Accordingly, the Chinese authorities enacted the Resource Tax Law (RTL) on August 26, 2019. Whether such a policy can achieve its desired goals has not been verified. Thus, our study applies a difference-in-differences approach to examine the effect of RTL on a firm’s energy efficiency (EE) with panel data of A-shares from 2017 to 2022. Benchmark analysis and robustness tests demonstrate RTL’s significant effect on resource-based firm’s EE. Additional tests deeply explore the policy effect under different situations. First, RTL boosts more for firms with higher initial EE levels than those with lower levels. Second, RTL enhances EE by promoting firms’ research and development investments, confirming the existence of the Porter hypothesis in China. Third, this policy shows a stronger positive effect on firms with political connections than those without. Finally, we detect that RTL has no significant impact in the western region, while its effect is significantly stronger in the middle region compared to the eastern region. Our empirical findings suggest that corporate firms and the government should adopt appropriate actions to enhance RTL’s policy effect.

作为全球最大的能源生产国与消费国，提升能源利用效率、推动能源可持续发展，对于中国实现社会可持续发展至关重要。据此，中国政府于2019年8月26日颁布《资源税法（Resource Tax Law，RTL）》。该政策能否达成预设目标，尚未得到实证检验。为此，本研究采用双重差分法（difference-in-differences），基于2017至2022年A股上市公司面板数据，考察资源税法对企业能源效率（energy efficiency，EE）的影响效应。基准回归分析与稳健性检验结果显示，资源税法对资源型企业的能源效率具有显著影响。拓展性检验进一步深入剖析了该政策的异质性作用效果：其一，相较于初始能源效率较低的企业，资源税法对初始能源效率较高的企业的提升作用更为显著；其二，资源税法通过促进企业研发投入提升能源效率，验证了波特假说（Porter hypothesis）在中国的适用性；其三，相较于无政治关联的企业，资源税法对具有政治关联的企业的正向影响更为突出；最后，研究发现资源税法对西部地区企业无显著影响，而相较于东部地区，中部地区企业的政策受益效应更为显著。本研究的实证结论表明，企业与政府应采取针对性措施，以强化资源税法的政策实施效果。