碳排放权交易政策能够提升企业ESG表现吗?——基于广义合成控制法的实证检验

Can Carbon Emissions Trading Policies Improve Corporate ESG Performance?An Empirical Test Based on the Generalized Synthetic Control Method

碳排放权交易机制作为一种市场激励型环境规制,能够鼓励企业更加注重环境保护、社会责任履行和内部治理水平提升,从而提升企业环境、社会和公司治理(environmental,social and governance,ESG)表现。文章基于碳排放权交易试点政策设计准自然实验,选取2009—2021年中国A股上市企业数据,运用广义合成控制法(generalized synthetic control method,GSCM),以绿色创新、信息披露和代理成本为机制变量,从理论逻辑和经验证据两个方面探讨中国碳排放权交易政策对企业ESG表现的影响、作用机制及异质性。研究表明:(1)碳排放权交易试点政策能够有效提升企业ESG表现,经过安慰剂检验和更换估计模型检验回归结果等一系列稳健性检验后,结论依然显著;(2)机制检验发现,碳排放权交易试点政策通过提高企业绿色创新水平和信息披露质量来提升企业ESG表现,但碳排放权交易试点政策会增加企业的代理成本从而降低企业ESG表现;(3)异质性检验发现,碳排放权交易试点政策在提升企业ESG表现的过程中具有区域、产权和行业差异。

Carbon emissions trading is becoming a market mechanism and a key tool in the fight against global warming,and as a market-based mechanism,carbon emissions trading will have a non-negligible impact on enterprises in the market.As the world's largest carbon emitter,China has built and launched eight carbon emissions trading market pilot zones,including Shenzhen,Shanghai and Beijing,and in July 2021,it will launch a full-scale carbon emissions trading market.Meanwhile,in recent years,the awareness of ESG concepts in China is rapidly gaining popularity,and the ESG performance of enterprises is gaining widespread attention from policy makers and market investors.Therefore,taking the carbon emissions trading pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment,it selects the data of China's A-share listed firms from2009-2021,and use the generalized synthetic control method to explore the impact,mechanism of action and heterogeneity of China's carbon emissions trading policy on firms'ESG performance in terms of theoretical logic and empirical evidence,using green innovation,information disclosure and agency cost as mechanism variables.The study shows that,firstly,the carbon emissions trading pilot policy can effectively enhance corporate ESG performance,and the findings remain significant after a series of robustness tests such as placebo test and replacement estimation model to test the regression results.Second,the mechanism test finds that the carbon emissions trading pilot policy will enhance corporate ESG performance by improving the level of corporate green innovation and the quality of information disclosure on the one hand,and increase corporate agency costs on the other hand so as to reduce corporate ESG performance,indicating that the level of corporate green innovation and the quality of information disclosure play a positive indirect role in the path of the carbon emissions trading pilot policy in influencing the ESG performance of corporations.role,and corporate agency costs have a masking effect in the path of carbon emissions trading pilot policies affecting corporate ESG performance.Third,the heterogeneity test finds that the pilot carbon emissions trading policy has regional,property rights and industry differences in the process of improving corporate ESG performance,i.e.,the pilot carbon emissions trading policy shows a good policy effect in the four pilot provinces and cities of Guangdong,Beijing,Shanghai and Shenzhen,but does not show a significant policy effect in the four pilot provinces and cities of Hubei,Fujian,Tianjin and Chongqing;the pilot carbon emissions trading policy.The carbon emissions trading pilot policy has a very good policy effect on improving the ESG performance of state-owned enterprises,but it can't have a significant impact on non-state-owned enterprises;the carbon emissions trading pilot policy has a good policy effect on improving the ESG performance of enterprises in both heavily polluted industries and non-heavily polluted industries,but it has a greater policy effect on the ESG performance of enterprises in non-heavily polluted industries.Based on the findings of the study,the following policy recommendations are put forward:Firstly,accelerate the construction of the national carbon emissions trading market and further improve the operational mechanism of carbon emissions trading.Secondly,strive to improve the level of green innovation and the quality of information disclosure of enterprises,continuously reduce the agency costs of enterprises,and continuously optimize the path of carbon emissions trading policy to promote the enhancement of ESG performance of enterprises.Thirdly,it will adhere to the principle of tailoring and classifying policies according to local conditions,and give full consideration to the differences between enterprises in different pilot regions,enterprises in different industries and enterprises with different property rights.