约束性碳减排与就业——基于企业和地区劳动力变化的考察

Binding Carbon Reduction Policy and Employment:Based on the Investigation of Labor Force Changes in Enterprises and Regions

基于企业层面的环境规制强度,本文使用中国工业企业数据库与《中国城市统计年鉴》数据,探究“万家企业节能低碳行动”对就业的影响。研究发现:随着减碳强度的提升,相比非万家企业,该政策通过“规模效应”“要素替代效应”和“技术效应”使得万家企业就业显著下降,表明该政策会降低污染企业就业。但城市层面分析发现该政策对城市工业企业总就业有显著正向影响,呈现出城市层面的就业创造。进一步探究劳动力再配置效应以解释企业和城市层面就业效应的差异发现,企业层面存在万家企业至非万家企业的劳动转移,行业层面就业存在从更为污染的行业向清洁行业的再配置,表明规制促进了行业转型升级。此外,政策实施后,减碳强度提升并未使得企业员工薪酬下降,表明该环境规制没有导致企业将减排治污成本转嫁造成员工福利损失。本文的研究结果能从就业角度为中国环境政策的成本收益分析提供参考。

In the past 15 years,China's fast economic development has resulted in huge environmental pollution problems.As environmental pollution problems become increasingly serious,the Chinese government has adopted a series of environmental regulation policies,which aims at reducing carbon emissions and environmental pollution.And it coincides with China's promise to the international community that China will peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.From the perspective of firms,when facing strict environmental regulations,the first way is to invest more in R&D to reduce carbon emissions.The second way is reducing the scale of production to meet the policy requirement.The third way is to replace labor with capital to reduce employment.Based on the binding carbon reduction policy of the"energy conservation and low-carbon action of ten thousand enterprises",this paper investigates whether the environmental regulation affects employment through the above channels and the labor force redistribution pattern at both firm and city levels.Combining data from the Chinese Industrial Enterprise Database and China City Statistical Yearbook between 2008 and 2013,we use the"energy conservation and low-carbon action of ten thousand enterprises"as the targeted policy and calculate the intensity of environmental regulation at the firm level to explore the impact of this policy on employment.Empirically,we use the differences-in-differences(DID)model to test the policy effect.It is found that as the carbon reduction target per unit of output increases,on average enterprise employment will decrease.And this result still holds after the parallel trend test and a series of robustness tests.In the context,we also give the mechanism analysis.It shows that the policy affects employment through the scale effect,factor substitution effect,and innovation compensation effect.In the short term,we find that enterprises will adjust their production scale to align with emission reduction targets,resulting in a decrease in employment opportunities,and firms will adopt new technologies to reduce pollution,which willfacilitate the substitution between labor and capital.Under the joint action of the three effects,the environmental regulation policy has a significant negative impact on enterprise employment.Further,the heterogeneity analysis shows that the environmental regulation policy has a smaller impact on the state-owned enterprises and enterprises in the western region.Meanwhile,the impact on enterprises with high capital intensity is relatively small.We find an interesting result that this policy leads to job creation at the city level.The city-level empirical result shows that the policy has a significant positive impact on total employment in the city.Then,this paper explains the labor reallocation effect and explores the reason for this phenomenon.It is found that there is labor transfer from regulated enterprises to non-regulated ones,and there is also employment reallocation at the industry level from polluted industries to clean industries,implying that this regulation has promoted the transformation and upgrading of the polluting industry.Moreover,we do not find welfare losses caused by this policy.The main contributions of this paper can be summarized in the following three aspects.First,we put the analysis of this policy effect at both firm and city levels in the same framework,which can comprehensively examine the policy effect at the micro and macro levels.From the perspectives of the scale effect,factor substitution effect,and innovation compensation effect,this paper also makes a detailed analysis of the mechanism of environmental regulation on employment at the firm level.Second,this paper fills the gap in the existing literature through the analyses of labor transfer and reallocation,which is usually from the adjustment of the regional industrial structure.We also use the DDD model to explore how the policy affects labor reallocation across industries based on industry-level data.Third,different from the existing literature,which mostly uses dummy variables to represent policies and the intensity of environmental regulation at the regional level,we use the continuous DID model and the intensity of environmental regulation policy at the firm level.It can more accurately describe the intensity of regulation faced by enterprises,and more reasonably define the treatment group and the control group.Thus,the empirical results are more convincing and raliable.