节能减排财政政策促进了绿色技术创新的“量质齐升”吗?

Does the Energy Saving and Emission Reduction Fiscal Policy Promote the Quantity and Quality of Green Technology Innovation?

“节能减排财政政策综合示范城市”试点作为绿色财政领域的一项重大实践,可以通过财政手段加快推动淘汰落后产能,严控高耗能、高排放行业过快增长,促进产业结构升级,从而成为驱动城市绿色技术创新的重要引擎。基于中国2003—2019年285个城市的面板数据,将“节能减排财政政策综合示范城市”试点视为准自然实验,通过构建多期双重差分模型,考察节能减排财政政策对绿色技术创新的影响及作用机制。研究结果表明:节能减排财政政策显著提升了示范城市绿色技术创新质量与数量,在经过堆叠双重差分、两阶段双重差分法等一系列稳健性检验后该结论仍然成立;中介效应分析表明,节能减排财政政策通过财政支持的科技资源配置效应和人才集聚效应以及环境规制的创新补偿效应提升示范城市绿色技术创新质量和数量;异质性分析发现,节能减排财政政策对绿色技术创新的影响,在不同地理位置、资源禀赋、金融科技水平的城市间存在显著差异;进一步分析还发现节能减排财政政策对相邻城市的绿色技术创新具有正向空间溢出效应。

This paper discusses the impact of the energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy on green technology innovation and its mechanism,which is of great significance for summarizing and promoting relevant experience of demonstration cities and promoting low-carbon economic transformation.Based on the panel data of 285 cities in China from 2003 to 2019,the paper uses the“comprehensive demonstration cities of energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy”as a quasi-natural experiment,and examines the impact of the energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy on green technology innovation and its mechanism by constructing a difference-in-differences(DID)model with multiple time periods.The results show that the energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy significantly improves the quality and quantity of green technology innovation in demonstration cities,and this conclusion is still valid under a series of robustness tests such as staggered DID and two-stage DID.The analysis of mediating effect shows that the energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy improves the quality and quantity of green technology innovation in demonstration cities through the“scientific and technological resource allocation effect”and“talent agglomeration effect”of financial support and the“innovation compensation effect”of environmental regulation.The heterogeneity analysis shows that there are significant differences in the impact of the energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy on green technology innovation among cities of different geographical locations,resource endowments,and Fintech levels.Further analysis shows that the energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy has a positively spatial spillover effect on green technology innovation in neighboring cities.The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows.First,the impact of the energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy on green technology innovation is evaluated from dimensions of“quality”and“quantity,”enriching relevant research on effects of the energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy.Second,it reveals the mechanism of the influence of the energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy on green technology innovation,and verifies the mechanism of“scientific and technological resource allocation,”“talent agglomeration”and“innovation compensation”from perspectives of financial support and environmental regulation,which provides a path for improving policy effects.Third,the staggered DID and the two-stage DID are used to reduce the heterogeneity of the treatment effect that may be caused by the negative weight of the staggered DID model.