僵尸企业与低碳转型发展:基于碳排放绩效的视角

Zombie Firms and Low-carbon Transformation Development:A Perspective on Carbon Emission Performance

推进经济低碳转型发展已成为中国实现生态文明建设战略目标的必然选择,而僵尸企业大量滋生可能会对地区经济低碳转型发展产生不容忽视的影响,但学界对此鲜有关注。本文采用FN-CHK方法对僵尸企业进行了识别,并构建了一种新颖的总体环境技术数据包络分析(DEA)模型,对我国地级及以上城市的碳排放绩效进行准确测算,以此来表征城市低碳转型发展程度,进而就僵尸企业对中国城市低碳转型发展的影响及其作用机制进行实证检验。研究发现,僵尸化程度的加深显著抑制了城市碳排放绩效的提升,从而不利于地区低碳转型发展,基于工具变量法等一系列稳健性检验结果强化了该结论。机制分析结果表明,僵尸企业在掣肘产业结构升级、挤占绿色信贷资源和挤出技术创新的同时,还会弱化地区市场竞争环境,从而阻碍低碳转型发展。本文在为僵尸企业的环境影响提供新的文献和经验证据的同时,也从僵尸企业的视角为有效推动中国的低碳转型发展提供了重要的决策依据。

The promotion of the low-carbon transformation of economic development has become an inevitable choice for China to achieve the strategic target of construction of an ecological civilization.The proliferation of zombie firms may have a significant impact on the low-carbon transformation and development of the regional economy;however,this issue has not yet attracted enough academic attention.This paper employs Chinese industrial enterprise data during 1998~2013 and the FN-CHK method to identify zombie firms.Furthermore,using a novel data envelopment analysis(DEA)model based on the total environmental technique,we accurately measured the carbon emission performance of prefecture-level(and above)cities to assess the degree of low-carbon transformation,and investigated for the first time the mechanism of impact of firms’zombification on urban carbon emission performance.The results show that the deepening of firms’zombification significantly inhibits the improvement of urban carbon emission performance and,thus,curbs low-carbon transformation.The results of a series of robustness tests,including the instrumental variable method,reinforce this conclusion.The results of the mechanism analysis indicate that zombie firms have an inhibitory effect on urban carbon emission performance through the green credit squeezing-out effect,the structure fixed effect,the innovation crowding-out effect,and the competition weakening effect.That is to say,while hampering the upgrade of the industrial structure and crowding out green credit resources and technological innovation,zombie firms can also weaken the regional market competition environment,thus hindering low-carbon transformation and development.The results of the heterogeneity analysis reveal that the carbon emission performance inhibition effect of zombie firms is more significant in central and western regions,and in regions with severe overcapacity.The structural lock-in effect,the innovation crowding-out effect,and the competition weakening effect are the main reasons inhibiting carbon emission performance in regions with a high proportion of state-owned economy,while the innovation crowding-out effect and the competition weakening effect jointly exacerbate the inhibitory effect of zombie firms on carbon emission performance in central and western regions and in regions with severe overcapacity.From the perspective of zombie firms,this study not only provides new literature and empirical evidence on the environmental impact of zombie firms,but also proposes a new policy strategy to effectively promote China’s low-carbon transformation through overcapacity governance.