环境规制执行对企业绿色创新的影响

Influence of environmental regulation enforcement on enterprises green innovation

环保的集权制度可提升环境规制执行的严格程度,从而有效降低分权体制带来的政企合谋可能;但企业创新在中央垂直管理下受何影响,也即波特假说是否成立依然有待验证。文章通过构建有关企业创新选择的理论模型,证明中央垂直化监管能够促进企业进行绿色创新,并且相比于创新能力弱的企业,创新能力更强的企业会进行更多的绿色创新。实证部分,文章使用2005—2009年企业面板数据,研究了2007年原国家环境保护总局提出的国家重点监控企业政策对废水排放企业绿色专利创新的影响,对理论模型所得结论进行了验证,为弱波特假说提供了新的支持。双重差分的结果显示,被纳入重点监控名单后,企业的绿色专利和绿色发明专利有显著提升,并且回归结果通过了平行趋势检验和安慰剂检验,使用PSM-DID方法后结果也依然稳健。经企业异质性分析发现,企业创新能力会强化上述政策效应,也即高创新能力的企业相比低创新能力企业会增加更多的绿色专利。上述结论具有较强的政策意义:(1)在我国环境标准趋严背景下,仅依靠地方监管存在诸如执行不力等问题,中央监管在一定程度上可克服上述弊病。(2)企业异质性分析结果也提示我们在实行上述中央监管政策时切勿"一刀切",要注意环境规制的设计强度和执行强度,同时考虑企业自身实际,保护企业在适度政策压力下进行绿色创新,或有序引导退出现有市场。(3)仅依靠单一的中央或地方监管是无法胜任目前复杂的环境治理任务的,需要通过严格的环保制度设计,形成中国独有的环境治理格局。

Centralization in environmental governance can decrease the possibility of collusion between governments and enterprises,as the implementation of environmental regulations becomes more stringent.This paper attempted to construct a theoretical model for enterprises innovation choices to find out if,with more stringent monitoring,enterprises could promote their green innovation,and the innovation ability could intensify this influence,that is,enterprises with stronger innovation ability relatively could have more green innovations.This paper verified the hypotheses based on a difference in differences(DID)model,using an enterprise-level dataset for China s industrial sectors from 2005 to 2009 and studying the treatment effect of the‘Enterprises Subject to Intensive Monitoring and Control of the State’pilot program proposed by the Ministry of Environmental Protection,mainly focusing on the green innovation behavior of enterprises with wastewater discharge.We found that,after being listed as Enterprises Subject to Intensive Monitoring and Control of the State,enterprises increased their green patents and inventions,which was also verified under the test for parallel trend before treatment,placebo test and PSM-DID method.Allowing for heterogeneity,we also found that,innovation ability could intensify treatment effect,as enterprises with stronger innovation ability could have a larger increase in their green patents.The conclusions above have strong policy implications:Firstly,as environmental regulation gets more stringent in China,the lack of implementation resulted from central government s reliance on local supervision can be partially overcome by enhancing central supervision.Secondly,the results of the heterogeneity analysis of enterprises also suggest that the central supervision policy is not a‘one-size-fits-all’solution;attention should also be paid to the design and enforcement of environmental regulations.In the meanwhile,we should protect the enterprises green innovation under moderate policy pressure,and help those with poor performance exit the market.Finally,simply relying on central supervision or local supervision is not enough as current environmental governance tasks become more complex,and it is necessary for China to design a stringent environmental protection system to form a unique environmental governance pattern.