前端环境规制、清洁生产与就业冲击——来自重点企业清洁生产审核的经验证据

Front-End Environmental Regulation,Cleaner Production and Employment Impact:Empirical Evidence from Cleaner Production Audit of Key Enterprises

前端环境规制在促进企业清洁生产的同时也会产生就业冲击,如何实现环境保护和“稳就业”的协同治理是当前中国巫函须解决的关键问题。本文借助生态环境部公布的五批“实施清洁生产审核并通过评估验收的重点企业名单”,将其逐一与中国工业企业数据库精准匹配,使用双重差分法研究了前端环境规制在微观层面对企业清洁生产和就业的影响及作用机制。研究发现,前端环境规制促进了企业的清洁生产与污染减排,但也对企业产生了就业冲击,导致企业就业人数减少,人均工资提高。这一效应与前端环境规制的“创新补偿效应”“技能替代效应”“成本增加效应”密切相关,企业对技能劳动力和非技能劳动力需求的反向变动致使就业人数减少与人均工资提高。异质性检验结果显示,当清洁生产的审核机构为私有企业、与被审核企业为同级和位于本地时,前端环境规制可以发挥更强的清洁生产效应。前端环境规制对清洁生产和就业的影响在不位于工业园区、非国有、利用外资较少和合规成本规模较小的企业中更为显著。本研究为中国协调环境治理与就业调控之间的关系提供了理论基础和现实经验。

How to balance environmental protection and economic development has always been a key issue in the formulation of environmental regulation policies.The Chinese government is facing the challenge of balancing environmental protection and employment promotion as it works to accelerate the green transformation of development methods and reduce environmental pollution.Previous research reached no conclusion on the relationship between environmental regulation and employment promotion,perhaps because they failed to distinguish different types of environmental regulation.Front-end environmental regulation is believed to promote the green transformation of production processes,but its impact on clean production and employment remains unclear.In addition,another unsolved challenge is to identify the net policy effects of front-end environmental regulation.This paper attempts to solve these issues.With that in mind,we used the list of five batches of enterprises that have implemented clean production audits and passed the acceptance review published by the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment,and collected their economic data from Chinese industrial enterprises.The difference-in-differences method was applied to analyze the influence of front-end environmental regulation on clean production and employment at the micro level and how.We found that front-end environmental regulation had positive impact on cleaner production and pollution reduction and the employment of enterprises,decreasing the employment scale while increasing per capita wages.This effect is closely related to the“innovation compensation,”“skill substitution,”and“cost increase”of front-end environmental regulation.The reversed demand for skilled and unskilled labor by enterprises leads to a decrement of employed personnel and an increment of per capita wages.The heterogeneity test results show that when the clean production is audited by a private-owned organization and the audited enterprise is located in same city and is of the same administrative level,front-end environmental regulation can exert a stronger effect on clean production.Moreover,the impact of front-end environmental regulation on clean production and employment is more significant in enterprises that are not located in industrial parks,non-state-owned,utilize less foreign investment,and have lower compliance costs.This paper has the following three contributions.(1)It demonstrates the impact of the front-end environmental regulation on clean production and employment.(2)It explains the mechanism via which frontend environmental regulation affects clean production and employment from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.(3)It identifies the micro-level net policy effects of front-end environmental regulation on clean production and employment for enterprises.