金融发展、环境规制与经济绿色转型

Financial Development,Environmental Regulations and Green Economic Transition

推动经济绿色转型是"十四五规划"的主要目标之一,经济绿色转型的本质是发展方式变革,环境投资在这一变革中具有举足轻重的作用。在当前财政资金只能覆盖少量环境支出的情况下,激发微观企业自主环境投资需求并缓解企业环境投融资约束成为未来工作的重点,需要进一步推动金融发展和健全环境规制,从而在实体经济供需两端形成绿色转型的合力。基于2004-2015年全国284个城市工业生产、污染防治和战略新兴产业技术创新等数据,文章研究发现,在环境规制未能显著发挥政策效应的情形下,金融发展能协同环境规制促进经济绿色转型。这表现在,金融发展协同环境规制显著提升了城市环境效益但未对城市经济效益产生冲击。机制分析表明,协同作用能促进工业污染治理提升城市资源使用效率,并促进战略新兴产业技术创新推动产业结构转型。上述结论在一系列内生性和稳健性检验中均保持不变。异质性分析揭示,环境信息不对称加剧、市场中介组织发育不完善以及技术创新转化能力弱等显著削弱了协同作用的发挥。因此,提升金融部门资金配置和开展绿色金融业务的能力,注重发挥金融发展与环境规制的协同作用有利于促进经济绿色转型。

With the global deterioration of ecology and the widening of inequality,achieving green,inclusive and sustainable economic growth has received worldwide recognition.The essence of green transition is the revolution of development mode,which requires a large amount of environmental investment,including enterprise pollution control and green R&D innovation,so as to promote the cleaning of traditional industries and the rise of green industries.In order to ensure that a large amount of environmental investment can be carried out,on the one hand,sound and strict environmental regulations need to be implemented by the environmental protection agency to stimulate enterprises’demand of environmental investment;on the other hand,the supply capacity of green funds by the financial sector also needs to be improved,so as to reduce the environmental financing constraints faced by enterprises.Therefore,financial development and environmental regulations can produce synergy at both ends of supply and demand of environmental investment and have a coordination effect on green economic transition.This paper exploits a comprehend dataset on the information of industrial production,pollution emission and green innovation of 284 cities in China from 2004 to 2015 to test the coordination effect.In recent years,the innovation and development of China’s financial system are reflected in local small financial institutions,in which the development of city commercial banks(CCB)has become an important symbol.With information advantages,more flexible supervision and diversified ownership structure,CCB can reduce information asymmetry in the lending process and alleviate the financing constraints faced by enterprises.Measuring the urban financial development based on the increase in the branches of CCB,this paper finds that local financial development can significantly reduce the industrial SO2 emission,the main pollutant in cities,in coordination with environmental regulations.The mechanism analysis shows that financial development and environmental regulations can synergistically promote industrial pollution control and green technological innovation,which reduces the emission intensity of industrial pollution and promotes the rise of green industry,thus promoting industrial green transition,without significant reduction of production.The conclusions remain stable after a series of endogenous and robustness tests.Heterogeneity analysis also reveals that environmental information asymmetry,the shortage of market intermediary service agency and the weak of the ability of technology commercialization will impair the coordination effect.The contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in two aspects:First,it reveals the factor of financial development in affecting green economic transition,which enriches the existing literature on financing constraints,financial development and economic green transition,and also provides useful policy enlightenment for the development of green economy.It is necessary to not only strictly implement environmental regulations,but also pay attention to the financial support and guidance role of the financial sector,so as to promote enterprises’pollution control and green R&D innovation.Second,to improve the supply capacity of green funds,China needs to not only deepen the reform of the financial system and make up for the shortcomings existing in the financial system,but also further improve the relevant supporting systems required for the development of green finance,including improving the enterprise environmental information disclosure and sharing mechanism,developing green financial intermediary service agency,and cultivating professional technical management talents,so as to improve the operational ability of green financial business during the supply of green funds.