中国农资生产企业中是否存在“以污染换取增长”现象?

Do China's Agricultural Production Material Firms Achieve Growth through Pollution?

现代农业生产过程中农药、化肥、农用塑料薄膜等农业生产资料被广泛使用,排放出大量有机物和无机物,造成了比较严重的农业面源污染。然而,以往研究大多集中于对农业生产过程中直接污染的分析,较少讨论农业生产资料生产过程中所造成的污染。实际上,农资产品的生产过程中往往也会产生大量环境污染,努力降低农资生产企业的环境污染也应是治理农业面源污染的一个重要组成部分。本文基于农资生产企业的微观数据分析了农资生产企业的环境污染状况对其未来年平均销售增长率的影响,检验农资生产企业中是否存在"以污染换增长"现象。在文中我们采用农资生产企业被征收排污费的情况来衡量其环境污染程度,采用企业的年平均销售增长率来衡量其未来业绩表现,进而进行了实证分析。实证分析结果显示,被征收排污费的农资生产企业中普遍存在着"以污染换取增长"的现象。实证结果表现为,如果农资生产企业被征收排污费占销售收入的比重越高,则该农资生产企业未来的销售增长率也相应越高。该研究结论对于我国农资生产企业排污费征收机制的设计和行业环境规制都具有重要的参考价值和借鉴意义。首先,我们建议环境保护部门和农业管理部门在未来应该适当提高农资生产行业的环境准入门槛,防止环境污染严重的企业进入该产业,并逐步淘汰部分高污染的农资生产企业。其次,环境保护部门应该进一步优化排污费的征收机制设计,努力降低农资产品生产过程中所造成的环境污染和生态破坏。最后,建议对农资生产企业的环保技术投资进行补贴。

Agricultural production materials such as pesticide,fertilizer,and agricultural plastic film are widely used in the modern agricultural production process.Consequently,many organic and inorganic pollutants are emitted,which cause serious agricultural nonpoint source pollution.However,previous literature mainly focused on analyzing the direct pollution during the agricultural production,and few studies explored the pollution during the production process of agricultural production materials.In fact,the production process of agricultural production materials are accompanied with serious pollutions,so it is also valuable to reduce the pollution in the production process of agricultural production materials.Based on the micro firm-level dataset of China agricultural production materials firms,we analyze the influence of corporate environmental pollutions on sales growth,to test whether some agricultural production materials firms achieve growth through pollutions.Here the firms ' environmental pollution is measured by pollution fees charged by the China government,and firms' sales growth is used to proxy for firms' future performance.The empirical results show that,many agricultural production materials firms achieve growth through pollutions.When a firm is charged higher pollution fees,then the firm obtains higher sales growth rates in the future.Our research findings have meaningful implications for the design of pollution fees charging systems and industrial pollution regulations.First,the results suggest the environmental pollution agency and agricultural management department should increase the environmental entry barriers,to prevent high pollution firms from entering this industry.Furthermore,the relevant agencies should also close the high-pollution firms.Second,environmental pollution agency should optimize the pollution fees charging system,decreasing the environmental pollution and ecological damage.