环境规制强度测度理论与实证进展

Theoretical and Empirical Research Progress in Evaluating Environmental Regulation Strength

作为环境经济学的热点之一,环境规制在实证研究中存在着测度指标选择和获取的困难,并由此阻碍了实证研究的进一步发展。回顾以环境规制为主题的国内外文献,国外的指标选取经历了从定性描述到简单定量指标再到综合指数型指标、从投入型指标到产出型指标的发展,而国内研究则主要采用两种简单定量指标即污染治理投资额和污染物排放量或以此为基础构建的指数指标作为环境规制强度的代表变量,近年来出现了以间接指标或表达式间接表示规制强度的方法。已有的研究数据表明,各国的环境规制都在加强,发达国家的规制强度提升速度高于发展中国家,并在规制形式上日益呈现出精简化、透明化和市场化的特点。研究测度指标在实证研究中的应用,可以发现,目前的指标选取存在着的不一致、难获得、不准确、内生性问题等缺陷降低了实证研究结果的说服力和互相印证/反驳的能力,因此需要进一步探索一致的、新的环境规制强度测度指标。

With increasing importance of environmental issues in the global economy and politics fields, Envi- ronmental regulation has been a research focus in the field of economics. A great amount of inspiring achievements constantly enrich people＇s understanding of environmental regulation itself and its impacts in the perspective of Eco- nomics. Although theoretical research has generated a lot of breakthroughs, empirical study in this field is facing obstacles of evaluating indicator, that is how to choose and acquire appropriate indicators to make comparisons among countries or industries. Due to lack of appropriate and consistent evaluating indicator, similar empirical re- searches often reach to contrary conclusions or insignificant regression results, making the conclusions of empirical researches less convincing. By researching and comparing domestic and foreign literatures of Environmental Regula- tion, it＇s found that foreign indicators follow a clear development route, from qualitative description to simple quan- titative indicator and then to composite index, from input oriented to output-oriented. Input-oriented indicator includes Pollution Abatement Cost （similar indicator such as regulation compliance cost）, pollution control invest- ment, number of inspections and government expenditure, while output-oriented indicator includes discharge fee/ tax and major pollutants emissions. After being introduced into empirical study by Walter ＆ Ugelow（ 1979）, com- posite index has experienced a transformation from mainly input-oriented indicator based to input-oriented indicator based while EPI index has been created and widely used to describe a country＇s environmental performance. Do- mestic literatures mainly cpncentrate on two kinds of simple quantitative indicators, Pollution Control Investment and Pollutant Emissions, and composite index based on them. In recent years, indicator selection in domestic re- search has been developed to be more complex and various, and some indirect indicators or expressions have been introduced into domestic environmental regulation research. There is not only simple quantitative indicator such as GDP per capital, but also composite index based on five indicators including environmental pollution lawsuits, un- employment rate, population density, age structure and education level. According to present researches, every country is enhancing its environmental regulation strength, but at different speed and levels. Regarding environ- mental regulation strength, developed countries are widely believed to have higher absolute level and increase rate when compared to most developing countries. When it refers to regulation forms, tendencies of transparent and mar- ketization as well as refined and simple are emerging. Empirical study in developed and developing countries have different angles in the choice of environmental regulation indicators ： 1 ） the former is inclined to choose PAC indi- cator while the latter is inclined to choose alternative and indirect indicators, and Chinese researches mostly choose two kind of indicators including pollution control investment and pollutants emission. 2） Although composite index is widely used in transnational comparison study, based on a variety of qualitative and quantitative regulation strength in developed countries tends to be evaluated , input and output indicators while in developing countries just based on relatively a few quantitative-output indicators, mostly pollutant emissions. Data accessibility, that is per- fection degree of statistical system, greatly contributes to above differences. When studying on the application of en- vironmental regulation indicators in the empirical research, it＇s found that, the defects of existing indicators, which are inconsistent, unavailable, inaccurate and endogenous, have reduced the empirical results＇ ability to prove or disprove a standpoint when compared to similar researches and make their arguments lack of persuasive.