地区环境治理压力、高管经历与企业环保投资——一项基于《环境空气质量标准(2012)》的准自然实验

Local Environmental Governance Pressure, Executive’s Working Experience and Enterprise Investment in Environmental Protection: A Quasi-natural Experiment Based on China’s “Ambient Air Quality Standards 2012”

本文从政治经济学分析视角,以《环境空气质量标准(2012)》的实施为准自然实验,将地方官员动机、企业环保决策与高管工作经历置于同一研究场景,采用倍差法检验了新标准实施引致的官员动机变化对企业环保决策的影响。研究结果显示,新标准实施前,高管具有公职经历企业的环保投资规模显著低于其他企业。而新标准实施后,高管具有公职经历企业的环保投资提升程度则显著高于其他企业。在财政环保支出较低和政府干预较强的地区,以及国有企业和高管的“先天”公职经历企业样本中,官员动机增强对高管具有公职经历企业的环保投资提升效果更强。此外,政府给予此类企业环保补助可能是激励其投资减排的重要经济手段。本文以宏观政策实施来外生化地方官员环境治理动机的变化,有利于因果识别官员动机、高管工作经历与企业环保决策间的逻辑关系。其政策意义在于,中国环境治理的症结是地方官员动机的缺失,当中央环境规制能有效激发官员环保意愿时,高管的公职经历将有利于提升企业环境治理水平。

Industrial activity,while rapidly accumulating economic benefits,has caused severe environmental problems.Yet it is difficult for enterprises to invest their limited financial resources in environmental protection,as the short-term benefit is to the public rather than the enterprise.Furthermore,as enterprise tax on profit-making activities contributes to local economic growth and helps local officials achieve their performance goals,when effective outside intervention is lacking,local governments may even be pleased to see enterprises invest in profit-making rather than environmental protection.Although China's central government has set up a series of polices,regulations,and institutions for environmental protection over the last 20 years,local government supervision of enterprises in polluting industries has not reached the expected goal.One reason is that the sheltering of local enterprises by local governments decreases their willingness to invest in environmental protection,as enterprises with executives who have working experiences in public office prefer low-cost penalties to high-cost environmental governance.The other possible reason is a lack of incentive for local officials to improve the environment.In the past,local officials were able to“tactically”modify environmental quality data to make them appear to meet central government targets.Under such circumstances,local governments use environmental deregulation to boost the local economy and tolerate or even permit excessive emissions by polluting enterprises.Identifying the main reason for the local environmental governance dilemma requires consideration of the combination of central government environmental policies,local official incentives to improve the environment,enterprise environmental protection decisions,and Executive's working expenience.Assuming that the connections between polluting enterprises and local governments are stable,we can systematically analyze the differential impact of a change in local official incentives on the environmental investment decisions of enterprises with and without executives who have working experiences in public office.We take the release of the“Ambient Air Quality Standards 2012”as an exogenous policy shock that gave local officials less control over environmental data and greater environmental governance incentives.Based on a difference in differences test,we find that before implementation of the new standards,enterprises with executives who have working experiences in public office invested significantly less in the environment than other enterprises;after implementation of the standards there was a significantly greater increase in environmental protection investment by enterprises with executives who have working experiences in public office than those without.Further analysis shows that(1)the more limited a local government s financial resources,the more it relies on environmental protection investment by enterprises with executives who have working experiences in public office;the more capable the government is to intervene to protect the environment,the more willing this type of enterprises are to invest in environmental governance;(2)being state-owned and working experiences in government significantly increase the willingness of this type of enterprises to improve environmental governance;and(3)environmental subsidies may be an approach for governments to stimulate this type of enterprises to reduce pollution.The possible contributions of our study include the following.First,we investigate the influence of macro-environmental policy on micro-level environmental protection decisions by enterprises from the perspective of political economics.Second,we clarify the logical relations between local official incentives,Executive's working experiences,and environmental governance by local enterprises,and find that the core issue in China's environmental governance is being lack of incentives for officials.When central government regulations effectively stimulate the willingness of officials to protect the environment,the inhibiting effect on environmental governance of collusion through government-enterprise connections is significantly alleviated.