碳减排政策是否提升了企业出口产品质量——基于低碳城市试点政策的研究

Does Carbon-reduction Regulation Improve Firms'Quality of Export Products-Evidence from the Low-carbon City Pilot Policy

碳减排对缓解全球变暖具有重要意义,但也使得很多发展中国家同时面临着环境保护与经济增长的双重压力。本文从出口产品质量的视角出发,运用中国低碳城市试点政策这一拟自然实验,采用2008—2014年中国工业企业数据库和中国海关数据库的合并数据,利用双重差分模型实证检验了碳减排政策对企业出口产品质量的影响效应。研究结果表明:低碳城市试点政策能够提高企业的出口产品质量,该效应通过低碳城市试点政策的创新效应和进口中间品质量提升效应实现;低碳城市试点政策有利于提升企业非环境类产品质量,且更能提升二氧化碳排放密度较低、资源依赖程度较低以及融资约束较小的企业的出口产品质量。本文的研究结果有利于增强发展中国家通过合适的环境政策设计实现碳减排与经济可持续发展双赢局面的信心。

Carbon reduction is vital in alleviating global warming while many developing countries face the dual pressure of environmental protection and economic growth.From the perspective of quality of export products and with the quasi-natural experiment created by China's low-carbon city pilot policy(LCCPP),we identify the impact of carbon-reduction regulation on firms'quality of export products in a difference-in-differences framework based on the China Customs Dataset and Chinese Annual Survey of Industrial Firms Dataset from 2008 to 2014.The results show that LCCPP improves firms'quality of export products through its innovation effect and improvement effect on the quality of imported intermediate input.In addition,LCCPP is conducive to improving firms'export quality of non-environmental products and the quality of export products of firms with lower carbon-emission intensity,lower resource dependence,and fewer financial constraints.Our results help enhance the confidence of developing countries to achieve a win-win situation of carbon reduction and high-quality economic development through an appropriate environmental policy design.