进口竞争如何影响企业环境绩效——来自中国加入WTO的准自然实验

How Import Competition Affects Firm Environmental Performance——A Quasi-Natural Experiment from China’s Entry into WTO

本文以中国加入WTO为准自然实验,采用倍差法识别了产出关税下降引致的进口竞争对企业环境绩效的影响效应。研究发现:进口竞争通过提升企业生产效率和管理效率的逃离竞争机制显著降低了中国企业污染排放强度,而以缩减企业产出规模、降低企业减排支出和弱化政府环境规制效果为具体路径的低成本竞争机制并不存在。此外,低污染企业进入引发的广延边际变动是进口竞争促进行业污染排放强度下降的重要途径。本文从微观环境绩效的新角度,理解了中国主动扩大进口的必要性。

Taking China’s entry into WTO as a quasi-natural experiment, we use difference-in-differences(DID) to identify the impact of import competition caused by the reduction of output tariffs on firm environmental performance. We find that the import competition significantly reduces the emission intensity of Chinese firms by escape-competition mechanism to improve firm production efficiency and management efficiency, while the low cost-competition mechanism with the specific path of reducing firm output, decreasing firm abatement expenditure and weakening government environmental regulation effect does not exit. In addition, the change of extensive margin caused by the entry of low-pollution firms is an important way for import competition to reduce industrial emission intensity. From a new perspective of micro-environmental performance, our study explains the necessity of China’s actively expanding imports.