Can reducing carbon emissions improve economic performance? Evidence from China

As the problem of carbon emissions is becoming increasingly more serious around the world, how to balance carbon emissions reduction and economic growth has become an important issue in the field of ecological economics. China is the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, and China's Low-Carbon Pilot (CLCP) policy has significantly reduced carbon dioxide emissions and achieved expected benefits. However, is environmental quality improving at the expense of economic growth? Based on panel data from 286 Chinese prefecture-level cities and from Chinese microindustrial enterprises from 2001 to 2013, this article focuses on the causal effect of environmental policy on regional economic growth and the benefits and changes in the behavior of enterprises through a quasi-natural experiment and the difference-in-differences (DID) method. The results are as follows. First, the CLCP policy significantly promotes regional economic growth. Moreover, as the implementation time of the policy continues, environmental regulation has a greater effect of promoting economic growth. Second, although the CLCP policy significantly increases various production costs, it also promotes the growth of enterprises' output and benefits. Third, under the pressure of the significant increase in enterprise cost caused by environmental regulation, enterprises choose the positive way of strengthening internal management, improving efficiency and increasing innovation instead of choosing the negative way of trans-regional transfer to exit the market; accordingly, enterprises finally achieve an improvement in output and benefits.

随着全球碳排放问题日益严峻，如何平衡碳排放削减与经济增长已成为生态经济学领域的重要议题。中国是全球最大的二氧化碳排放国，中国低碳试点（China's Low-Carbon Pilot, CLCP）政策已显著降低了二氧化碳排放并取得了预期成效。然而，环境质量的改善是否以牺牲经济增长为代价？本文基于2001年至2013年中国286个地级市的面板数据（panel data）以及中国微观工业企业数据，通过准自然实验（quasi-natural experiment）与双重差分（difference-in-differences, DID）方法，聚焦于环境政策对区域经济增长的因果效应，以及企业的收益与行为变化。研究结果如下：其一，CLCP政策显著推动了区域经济增长；且随着政策实施时长的延续，环境规制对经济增长的促进效应会进一步增强。其二，尽管CLCP政策显著提升了企业的各类生产成本，但同时也推动了企业产出与效益的增长。其三，在环境规制带来企业成本大幅攀升的压力下，企业并未选择跨区域转移退出市场这类消极应对方式，而是通过强化内部管理、提升运营效率与增加创新投入等积极路径进行应对，最终实现了产出与效益的提升。