贸易开放条件下的区域分工与工业污染排放

Regional division of labour and its environmental performance in the context of trade liberalisation

对外贸易是否导致专业化区域锁定于污染行业而加剧污染排放?从动态视角出发,将区域分工视为专业化集聚与动态演化的综合,基于中国2003-2009年261个地级市30个制造业大类数据,借助区位商与共现概率描述专业化集聚与动态演化,构建联立方程模型进行实证检验。结果表明:一方面,专业化集聚将形成多个层面拥挤效应,降低污染行业进一步集聚的概率,制约区域朝着污染专业化方向演化;另一方面,环境规制将有效抑制区域进一步朝着污染专业化方向演化。因此,尽管对外贸易扩张在一定程度上强化了污染行业在专业化区域的集聚,但并未因此造成污染排放在区域之间形成两极分化。

Foreign trade can induce the regional division of labour in pollution-intensive sectors. There are also concerns on a likely polarisation of pollution emission in the wake of regional division. This study incorporates a dynamic perspective into the regional division of labour, which becomes a synergy of specialised agglomeration and industrial dynamics. The location quotient is applied to assess the level of specialised agglomeration. An index is also constructed based on co-occurrence probability to capture the route of industrial dynamics.Thus, a simultaneous equation model is constructed to empirically examine the linkage between local environmental performance and regional division of labour, and the role of foreign trade in such a linkage. An ＂industry-city-year＂ data panel is established to support the empirical study, which covers 261 prefectural-level cities and 30 industries at the two-digit level with the study period spanning from 2003 to 2009. The results show that an increasing scale of agglomeration is likely to generate various crowding-out effects, resulting in less coagglomeration of related industries. It will, in turn, keep the industrial mix from moving towards a locked-in way. On the other hand, environmental regulation has been efficient in emission reduction, effectively reducing the probability of introducing new pollution-intensive sectors. To summarize, although the expansion of foreign trade can promote the level of specialised agglomeration, it is less likely to polarise the pollution emission among regions.The results may offer insightful references for managing the tradeoffs between foreign trade and the environment. First, there is a spatial asymmetry between pollution-intensive sectors and their non-pollution-intensive counterparts. The non-pollution-intensive sectors tend to avoid the co-location with the pollution-intensive sectors. In such cases, the co-agglomeration between pollution-intensive and non-pollution-intensive sectors can crowd out the non-pollution intensive ones in its early stage. The efforts on developing non-pollution-intensive sectors should pay off in the long run. Second, there are both active and passive ways to keep regions from being locked in pollution production. Previous efforts may focus on the role of active ways, such as the environmental regulation. However, it is also beneficial to take advantage of the passive ways.