{"title":"Is green place-based policy effective in mitigating pollution? Firm-level evidence from China","authors":"Qi Cheng, Jun Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.eap.2024.07.003","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The green place-based policy is crucial for balancing economic competitiveness and environmental protection. However, there is scarce literature examining its impact on environmental pollution and the underlying mechanisms at the micro level. This paper treats China's National Demonstration Eco-Industrial Parks (EIP) as a quasi-natural experiment and systematically evaluates its effect on pollution using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach. With data from Chinese industrial firms and counties, this research reveals that the EIP leads to a significant reduction of 54.36% in firms’ sulfur dioxide (SO<sub>2</sub>) emissions. Moreover, increasing R&D investment, reducing SO<sub>2</sub> emission intensity, implementing production process pollution control, and dynamic adjustments of firm entry and exit are significant influencing mechanisms. Heterogeneity tests indicate a stronger SO<sub>2</sub> reduction effect of the EIP program on firms in eastern regions, capital-intensive industries, and non-state-owned enterprises. This study suggests that the Chinese government should support the establishment of EIP, conduct a coordinate system, strategically plan the industrial chain, establish a pollution monitoring and early warning system, enhance information disclosure, and give greater emphasis to the construction of EIPs in central and western China.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":54200,"journal":{"name":"Economic Analysis and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Economic Analysis and Policy","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592624001693","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The green place-based policy is crucial for balancing economic competitiveness and environmental protection. However, there is scarce literature examining its impact on environmental pollution and the underlying mechanisms at the micro level. This paper treats China's National Demonstration Eco-Industrial Parks (EIP) as a quasi-natural experiment and systematically evaluates its effect on pollution using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach. With data from Chinese industrial firms and counties, this research reveals that the EIP leads to a significant reduction of 54.36% in firms’ sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions. Moreover, increasing R&D investment, reducing SO2 emission intensity, implementing production process pollution control, and dynamic adjustments of firm entry and exit are significant influencing mechanisms. Heterogeneity tests indicate a stronger SO2 reduction effect of the EIP program on firms in eastern regions, capital-intensive industries, and non-state-owned enterprises. This study suggests that the Chinese government should support the establishment of EIP, conduct a coordinate system, strategically plan the industrial chain, establish a pollution monitoring and early warning system, enhance information disclosure, and give greater emphasis to the construction of EIPs in central and western China.
期刊介绍:
Economic Analysis and Policy (established 1970) publishes articles from all branches of economics with a particular focus on research, theoretical and applied, which has strong policy relevance. The journal also publishes survey articles and empirical replications on key policy issues. Authors are expected to highlight the main insights in a non-technical introduction and in the conclusion.