How does environmental regulation promote technological innovations in the industrial sector? Evidence from Chinese provincial panel data

Can the green credit policy stimulate green innovation in heavily polluting enterprises? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

Towards carbon neutrality by implementing carbon emissions trading scheme: Policy evaluation in China

Agricultural policy reform has been an important source of change in the Chinese agricultural sector. The reforms led to productivity growth and helped China in pursuing its self- sufficiency goal especially in the grain sector. To analyse whether observable productivity growth stems from technologically induced components, or from the market induced parts, a multi-input-multi-output model is derived using an econometric distance function framework. A decomposition allows to distinguish allocative effects, scale effects, technological change, and technical efficiency change. Data on farms in Zhejiang from 1986 to 1999 are used to analyse the impact of policy reform.

Policy reform and productivity change in chinese agriculture: a distance function approach

This study investigated the causal linkage between environmental pollution by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and net foreign direct investment (FDI), along with some other variables, namely economic growth by real per capita income and trade openness, using balanced annual data of 17 countries from Asia for the period from 1980 to 2014. Panel cointegration tests confirm the long-run association among the variables. After checking the panel data for stationarity properties, the method panel fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) is implemented. The FMOLS estimates on CO2 emission model reveal that inward FDI has a significantly positive impact on environmental pollution, supporting the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH). Likewise, FDI model results imply that CO2 emissions represent environmental pollution; economic growth and trade openness are the pivotal determinants of FDI. Panel causality results suggest bidirectional linkages between CO2 emissions and inward FDI. Empirical findings suggest that economic policy reforms are required to channelise foreign capital inflows to a more environmentally healthy direction. The governments of Asian countries should chalk out policies on FDI inflows and the environment in order to achieve sustainable economic growth and development.

Examining foreign direct investment and environmental pollution linkage in Asia.

Quantity or quality? The impacts of environmental regulation on firms’ innovation–Quasi-natural experiment based on China's carbon emissions trading pilot

This study examines the spillover effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on green technology progress rate (as measured by the green total factor productivity). The analysis utilizes two measures of FDI, labor-based FDI and capital-based FDI, and separately investigates four sets of industry classifications—high/low discharge regulation and high/low emission standard regulation. The results indicate that in the low discharge regulation and low emission standard regulation industry, labor-based FDI has a significant negative spillover effect, and capital-based FDI has a significant positive spillover effect. However, in the high-intensity environmental regulation industry, the negative influence of labor-based FDI is completely restrained, and capital-based FDI continues to play a significant positive green technological spillover effects. These findings have clear policy implications: the government should be gradually reducing the labor-based FDI inflow or increasing stringency of environmental regulation in order to reduce or eliminate the negative spillover effect of the labor-based FDI.

Environmental Regulation, Foreign Direct Investment and Green Technological Progress—Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Industries

Many researchers have studied the relationships among heterogeneous foreign direct investment (FDI), environmental regulation, and green total factor productivity. However, no research has been done on how different types of FDI can result in green technology spillover under different levels of environmental regulation intensity. To address this research gap, in this paper, we build a static linear panel model, a static panel threshold model, and a dynamic panel threshold model to investigate the environmental regulatory threshold effect of labor-based FDI and capital-based FDI in terms of their green technology spillover. Based on the measurement of green total factor productivity (GTFP) of 36 industry sectors in China from 2003 to 2015, we first compare the threshold effects of environmental regulation on green technology spillover between labor-based FDI and capital-based FDI with a static linear model and a static threshold model. The results show that environmental regulation is unable to significantly promote the green technology spillover of labor-based FDI. However, intensifying environmental regulation can reduce the negative impact of labor-based FDI on GTFP. The effect of environmental regulation on green technology spillover of capital-based FDI is more complex. In the static linear model, environmental regulation can significantly promote the green technology spillover of capital-based FDI. In the static threshold model, the green technology spillover of capital-based FDI exists only when the environmental regulation intensity is sufficiently low or sufficiently high. Finally, the dynamic threshold model is adopted for robustness check. The results show when the environmental regulation intensity is higher than a threshold, both types of FDI can indeed result in green technology spillover. In short, our results prove that to ensure that FDI results in green technology spillover, it is necessary to continue to strengthen environmental regulation.

Environmental Regulation Intensity, Foreign Direct Investment, and Green Technology Spillover—An Empirical Study

In this paper, a nonparametric method is used to measure the total factor productivity (TFP) growth index in Chinese agriculture from 1981 to 2017, and the factor bias of technological progress is ...

Factor allocation structure and green-biased technological progress in Chinese agriculture

In this paper, we build and analyze a general equilibrium model to evaluate the effects of environment tax reform on a small open economy in a "suboptimal environment" with existing tax distortions. We then use the macroeconomic data from the Chongqing Municipality in China to conduct simulations to empirically test our analytic results. Our main findings include the followings. First, an increase in environmental tax rate can effectively reduce the use of polluting consumer goods by households as well as investment in polluting factors by enterprises. Hence, an increase in environmental tax rate can improve environmental quality and obtain "environmental dividend". Second, an increase in environmental tax rate can negatively impact employment, family income and economic growth. Hence, there is no "non-environmental dividend" effect. Third, an increased environmental tax rate has both substitution effect and income effect on household consumption. On the one hand, it motivates households to substitute polluting consumer goods with clean consumer goods. On the other hand, it lowers the total consumption level of households. Fourth, we show that the "double dividend" hypothesis on environmental tax is invalid. And the optimal environmental tax under the suboptimal environment is lower than the Pigouvian tax rate. Finally, we discuss the policy implications of our results.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/1/217/pdf

Jiangfeng Hu

Papers

Quantity or quality? The impacts of environmental regulation on firms’ innovation–Quasi-natural experiment based on China's carbon emissions trading pilot

Environmental Regulation, Foreign Direct Investment and Green Technological Progress—Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Industries

Environmental Regulation Intensity, Foreign Direct Investment, and Green Technology Spillover—An Empirical Study

Factor allocation structure and green-biased technological progress in Chinese agriculture

Environmental Tax Reform and the "Double Dividend" Hypothesis in a Small Open Economy