基于技术距离的环境治理对企业全要素生产率的影响

The effects of environmental governance on total factor productivity of firms: analysis based on technical distance

环境治理是协同推进生态文明建设和经济高质量发展的重要途径,而全要素生产率(TFP)增长是经济高质量发展的根本动力,因此,关于环境治理影响全要素生产率问题的研究成为学术界持续关注的重要命题。然而,现有研究大多在企业同质化的假设前提下展开,忽视了异质性企业对于环境治理的差异化反应,尤其是当企业基于前沿的技术距离存在差异时,会直接影响环境治理的全要素生产率效应。为此,本文首先从理论上剖析了技术距离下环境治理影响企业全要素生产率的作用机制,其次构建了企业基于前沿的技术距离指标,选取2007—2015年CSMAR数据库收录的9 038个企业样本,利用双向固定效应模型实证检验了在技术距离的作用下,环境治理对企业全要素生产率的异质性影响。结果表明:(1)企业基于前沿的技术距离越近,环境治理越有利于全要素生产率提升,反之,越不利于企业全要素生产率增长。(2)分组回归进一步探讨了环境治理异质性影响企业全要素生产率的作用机制,对于临近前沿型企业,环境治理分别通过自主创新机制和模仿追赶机制推动全要素生产率增长;对于中间型企业,环境治理主要通过模仿追赶机制提升企业的全要素生产率水平;而对于远离技术前沿的企业,环境治理未能通过任何一种机制"倒逼"企业实现全要素生产率增长。这一研究结论有助于决策部门"因企制宜"地修正环境政策和产业政策,如完善针对低技术企业的市场退出机制、营造良好的市场环境加速中间型企业向技术前沿收敛、加大对前沿型企业的创新支持,避免陷入"模仿"陷阱等。

Environmental governance is an important approach to cooperatively promote ecological civilization construction and high quality economic development.Consequently,total factor productivity(TFP)growth-which is the fundamental driving force for high quality development-has received increasing research attention.However,most of existing studies are based on the hypothesis of firm s homogeneity,overlooking the heterogeneous response of different firms to environmental governance.Heterogeneous response of different firms directly affects the impacts of environmental governance on TFP,and this is particularly the case in the presence of the differences of technical distances to frontier across different firms.Therefore,this paper first theoretically analyzed the mechanism how environmental governance affected heterogeneous firms TFP based on technical distances.Then it empirically tested the heterogeneous influences of environmental governance on firms TFP based on technical distances using two-direction fixed effects model.The samples covered 9 038 firms selected from CSMAR database from 2007 to 2015.The empirical results showed that:①As an firm s technical distance got closer to the frontier,environmental governance was more beneficial to the growth of TFP,and vice versa.②Regression by groups further analyzed how environmental governance heterogeneously affected firms TFP.For the firms close to frontier,environmental governance increases their TFP through independent innovation mechanism and catching-up mechanism.In contrast,for the firms far away from frontier,environmental governance failed to promote their TFP growth through any mechanism.Environmental governance increased the TFP of firms in the middle through catching-up mechanism.The notable conclusions provided a theoretical and practical basis for better environmental policy recommendation,such as improving market-exit mechanism,creating a favorable market environment to accelerate the convergence of intermediate firms to frontier,and enhancing support to the innovation of frontier firms for avoiding being trapped in the‘imitation trap’.