国家级金融改革试验区能否促进低碳转型发展——来自准实验的考察

Does State-level Financial Reform Pilot Zones Promote Low-Carbon Transitional Development?

实现碳达峰、碳中和目标是推动我国经济高质量发展的内在要求,低碳转型发展无疑是实现这一重要目标的必由之路。而通过金融改革有效促进碳排放绩效提升,已经成为低碳转型发展的必然选择。本文以国家级金融改革试验区政策作为准实验,采用考虑环境非期望产出的包含总体环境技术的DEA模型,对城市的碳排放绩效进行准确核算,以此对低碳转型发展水平进行衡量,进而采用DID方法系统地研究了金融改革试验区对低碳转型发展的影响及内在作用机制。研究发现:金融改革政策的实施显著地促进了城市低碳转型发展,在经过一系列稳健性检验后该结论依然成立;机制分析表明,金融改革政策能够有效改善金融资源配置,并促进绿色技术进步,从而加速城市低碳转型发展;异质性分析表明,金融改革政策对低碳转型发展的促进效应在资源型城市、东部地区、二线和三线城市更为明显。本文的研究为准确理解国家级金融改革试验区推动我国低碳转型发展的效应及机制提供了有力的经验证据。

Achieving the goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality is an inherent requirement for promoting the high-quality development of China's economy,and low-carbon transformational development(LCTD)is undoubtedly a necessary way to achieve this important goal,and the effective promotion of carbon emission performance improvement through financial reform has become an inevitable choice for LCTD.This paper takes the national-level financial reform pilot zone policy as a quasi-experiment.The carbon emission performance of the city is accurately accounted for by using a DEA model incorporating aggregate environmental technologies that take into account environmentally undesired outputs as a measure of the level of LCTD.Then,the impact of financial reform pilot zones on LCTD and the intrinsic mechanism of action are systematically investigated using the DID method.The results of the study show that:The implementation of the financial reform policy significantly promotes the LCTD,and this conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests.Mechanism analyses show that the financial reform can effectively improve the financial resource allocation effect and promote the progress of green technology,thus accelerating LCTD.Heterogeneity analyses show that the promotional effect of financial reform policies on LCTD is more pronounced in resource-based cities,eastern regions,second-tier and third-tier cities.The research in this paper provides strong empirical evidence for an accurate understanding of the effects and mechanisms of national-level financial reform pilot zones in promoting LCTD in China.