低碳经济转型与企业出口产品质量:基于低碳城市试点的准自然实验

Low-Carbon Economic Transition and Quality of Export Products:A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on A Low Carbon City Pilot

低碳经济转型与贸易强国建设是经济高质量发展的重要内容。文章将低碳城市试点政策作为一项准自然实验,通过匹配2007~2015年中国海关数据和上市公司数据,实证检验低碳经济转型对企业出口产品质量的影响及其机制。研究发现,低碳城市试点政策显著提升了企业出口产品质量,且经过一系列稳健性检验后结论依然成立。进一步分析表明,试点政策的产品质量提升效应在不同产业、不同碳排放强度行业、不同清洁程度产品以及是否为资源型城市企业中存在显著差异;企业层面的机制分析表明,低碳城市试点政策主要通过技术创新效应促进企业出口产品质量提升,而环保投入效应尚未得到验证;产品层面的机制分析表明,低碳城市试点政策主要通过资源配置优化促进高质量产品升级,抑制低质量产品升级。文章的结论从贸易高质量发展维度验证了低碳城市试点政策的经济效应,为未来实现低碳经济转型提供了重要参考。

High-quality economic development requires the transition to a low-carbon economy and the creation of a powerful trading nation.By comparing data from listed companies and Chinese customs from 2007 to 2015,this paper uses the low-carbon city pilot strategy as a quasi-natural experiment to empirically examine the effect of low-carbon economic transformation on firms'export product quality and its mechanism.Theresults of a series of robustness tests show that the low-carbon city pilot strategy greatly raises enterprises'export product quality.Additional research reveals that the impact of the pilot policy on improving product quality varies significantly across industries with varying carbon emission intensities,products with varying degrees of cleanliness,and enterprises of whether located in resource-based cities or not.Firm-level mechanism research reveals that the low-carbon city pilot policy promotes improving product quality of enterprises'exports primarily through technological means.The low-carbon city pilot program primarily encourages the upgrading of high-quality products and hinders the upgrading of low-quality products through the optimization of resource allocation,according to the product-level mechanism analysis.The findings of this paper validate the economic effects of low-carbon city pilot policies from the dimension of high-quality trade development and provide an important reference for achieving low-carbon economic transformation in the future.