环境成本上升如何影响企业就业增长？——基于排污费修订政策的实证研究

How Do Rising Environmental Costs Affect Employment Growth:An Empirical Study Based on the Revision Policy of Pollution Discharge Fees

环境成本上升是否会影响企业的就业增长?这是评估环境规制政策成本的一个重要层面。本文基于2003年排污费修订的准实验,利用1998—2007年中国工业企业的微观数据,采用基于倾向匹配的双重差分方法考察了排污费修订对企业就业增长的影响。研究表明,环境成本上升降低了企业就业增长,缴纳排污费的企业的就业创造率下降,就业损失率上升,企业吸纳潜在就业的能力减弱。但是通过计算发现,这种就业影响在样本整体就业规模中的比重很小。从动态趋势来看,在污染治理投资的挤占效应和需求效应的叠加影响下,环境成本上升对就业增长的抑制作用呈现先上升后下降的倒U型趋势。就企业要素密集度而言,劳动密集型企业的就业损失更为明显,环境成本对生产性劳动力的挤出效应更强。从企业规模的角度来说,环境成本上升对大规模企业的就业扩张产生了更强的抑制作用,小规模企业则面临着更强的就业损失效应。此外,企业创新能够弥补治污可能引致的就业挤出,进而减缓排污费修订带来的负向就业增长。

Whether the rising environmental costs will affect employment growth of plants is an important dimension to assess the efficiency of environmental policies.Based on the revision of pollution discharge fees in 2003 and Chinese manufacturing data from 1998-2007,the paper uses PSM-DID method to investigate the effect of revised fees on plants'employment growth.The results show that the rising environmental costs reduce employment growth significantly,which are mainly reflected as the decreased job creation rate and increased job destruction rate of plants that have paid the pollution fees.It means that,under the rising environmental costs,the plant's employment expanding are limited.However,it is found that the average annual employment loss only accounts for 0.12%of the sample.Under the cumulated influence of crowding-out effect from pollution investment and labor demand effect from pollution treatment,the inhibitory effect of rising environmental costs on employment growth shows obvious inverted"U"trend of rising first and then decreasing.In terms of factor intensity,it is obvious that the environmental costs bring more adverse impact on labor intensive plants,because of the crowing-out effect on productive employment opportunities.From the perspective of firm size,the rising environmental costs cause significant adverse effect on large scale plants'employment expanding.But small-scale enterprises are faced with more job losses.In addition,business innovation helps to alleviate the adverse employment impact caused by the rising environmental costs.