Impact of an official accountability audit on industrial structure adjustment:a case study of environmental regulation in China

As a unique environmental regulation in China,the official accountability audit was piloted in 2014.With a focus on prioritizing the ecological environment,officials in pilot districts have implemented economic construction,adjusted industrial structures,and promoted coordinated development between the economy and environment.The effects of implementation have garnered widespread attention from society.However,there is limited research on the impact of an accountability audit on industrial structure adjustments.Using the“Accountability Audit of Officials for Natural Resource Assets(Trial)”released in 2015 as a quasi-natural experiment,this study collected panel data from 279 cities between 2013 and 2017.It then empirically analyzed the impact mechanism and effects of the accountability audit on industrial structure adjustment using the Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences model.The research findings indicate that the accountability audit directly impacted industrial structure adjustment,promoting the upgrading of the primary industry to the secondary industry and restricting the development of the tertiary industry.In addition,the audit is beneficial for enterprise entry,but not conducive to technological innovation,and has no significant impact on foreign direct investment.This conclusion fills a gap in the existing research and provides valuable insights for policymakers.

Contract Mechanism of Water Environment Regulation for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises Based on Optimal Control Theory

The small and scattered enterprise pattern in the county economy has formed numerous sporadic pollution sources, hindering the centralized treatment of the water environment, increasing the cost and difficulty of treatment. How enterprises can make reasonable decisions on their water environment behavior based on the external environment and their own factors is of great significance for scientifically and effectively designing water environment regulation mechanisms. Based on optimal control theory, this study investigates the design of contractual mechanisms for water environmental regulation for small and medium-sized enterprises. The enterprise is regarded as an independent economic entity that can adopt optimal control strategies to maximize its own interests. Based on the participation of multiple subjects including the government, enterprises, and the public, an optimal control strategy model for enterprises under contractual water environmental regulation is constructed using optimal control theory, and a method for calculating the amount of unit pollutant penalties is derived. The water pollutant treatment cost data of a paper company is selected to conduct empirical numerical analysis on the model. The results show that the increase in the probability of government regulation and public participation, as well as the decrease in local government protection for enterprises, can achieve the same regulatory effect while reducing the number of administrative penalties per unit. Finally, the implementation process of contractual water environmental regulation for small and medium-sized enterprises is designed.

Asymmetric Environmental Regulation:Mechanism and a Yardstick Phenomenon

In discussing the policy effects of environmental regulation,we should focus not only on whether environmental regulation helps improve the environmental and economic performance of firms,but also on how such improvement is materialized,i.e.whether the obsolete mode of production is reversed.After matching the database of China’s industrial enterprises with that of pollution emissions from these industrial enterprises,this paper identifies the asymmetric scope of clean production standards to test the effect of environmental regulation on the total factor productivity(TFP)of the industrial enterprises.Our empirical research finds that the implementation of clean production standards may induce TFP improvement.However,such improvement only occurs for polluters who cannot or who barely meet clean production standards and does little to improve the production standards of polluters with low pollution emission,reflecting the yardstick phenomenon of the asymmetric environmental regulation policy effect:While polluters are forced to improve,clean enterprises that pollute less are more likely to take no action.Further research finds that such TFP improvement is materialized primarily by means of overall firm optimization;the compensation effect is insignificant and does not reverse the backward mode of production.Polluters cope with the implementation of clean production standards by purchasing more equipment and expanding capacity,which adds to the tension between the expansion of capacity and the abatement of pollution emission.

The impact of political connections on firm pollution: New evidence based on heterogeneous environmental regulation

Increasing attention has been focused on the extent to which corporate political connections influence the growing pollution due to the rapid growth in the popularity of firm pollution in developing countries.We adopt a static threshold regression model to investigate the effects of heterogeneous environmental regulation on political connections and firm pollution based on the panel data from China’s A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2019.The empirical results show a non-linear relationship between the degree of political connection of listed company executives and the level of firm pollution.And the relationship between the two roughly presents a U-shaped relationship under the action of the marketincentive environmental regulation threshold.However,it roughly presents an inverted N-shaped relationship under the action of the command-control environmental regulation threshold.Additionally,the group test results show that the existence of regional and ownership heterogeneity causes certain differences in the environmental behaviour of politically connected enterprises.These findings indicate that diverse environmental regulations are needed to promote sustainable green development and to further expand the theoretical and practical exploration of political connections on firm pollution.

Primary and Secondary Microplastic and Nanoplastic Regulations: Perspectives on Water Industry Impacts

Plastic pollution, both primary and secondary, is an environmental challenge, prompting regulatory actions at global and regional levels. With increasing research about the impacts of micro- and nanoplastics on ecosystems and human health, governments worldwide have undertaken efforts to address this issue. The global community has advanced regulatory efforts that have led to the implementation of national laws or regulations in numerous countries. These measures ban or restrict the use of primary and secondary microplastics and nanoplastics. An overview of global and European regulatory frameworks is presented to provide context for the United States (US). In the endeavor to document plastics regulation development in the US, a description of regulatory agencies and their roles in advancing policy and rules as well as future direction and areas for improvement in regulating plastics are introduced. A discussion of what emerging regulations mean to utilities and industries is also provided along with a comparison of regulatory frameworks.

Analysis of Effluent Outfall Problems and Their Classification and Regulation Countermeasures

Effluent outfalls are an important exit for pollutants discharged from the source flowing into environmental water bodies,as well as an important guarantee for the ecological environment of natural water bodies.In response to main problems of large and diverse effluent outfalls,as well as their monitoring analysis,tracing and regulation in China,classification and regulation countermeasures were proposed based on the characteristics of effluent outfalls.It is suggested that a comprehensive management and control system should be built by improving the management and control system,upgrading monitoring techniques and strengthening social supervision and public education,so as to provide a scientific basis for the supervision and management of effluent outfalls in China and help promote the improvement of water quality and the sustainable development and utilization of water resources.

Research on the Theory of Governmental Environmental Regulatory Responsibility

In recent years,the environmental pollution caused by the rapid development of tourist attractions has increasingly become the focus of society,which has triggered scholars to think about the government's responsibility for environmental regulation,and has generated a variety of theories in the academic world.For example,the stakeholder theory extends corporate governance to the regulation of tourism scenic spots,and achieves the purpose of perfecting the environmental regulation of tourism scenic spots by continuously enriching the scope of stakeholders'subjects;the property rights theory analyzes the transaction costs generated by various economic activities in the regulation of tourism scenic spots from macro and micro perspectives,and the public goods theory clarifies the concept,types and characteristics of tourism scenic spots as public goods.Therefore,based on stakeholder theory,property rights theory and public goods theory,this paper explores and clarifies the content of the government's responsibility in the environmental regulation of tourism scenic spots,and tries to further enrich the theoretical results of the government's environmental regulation responsibility,in order to provide new ideas for the sustainable development of tourism scenic spots from the theoretical point of view.

An empirical analysis on the impact of environmental regulations on pork trade:evidence from China

This paper uses the gravity model to examine the effect of environmental regulations on pork trade flows between different regions within China.We apply a linear programming tool to estimate pork trade flows from 2000 to 2008,and discuss the environmental acts on livestock pollution and income level to proxy environmental regulations.We use OLS regression and panel data with dummy variable in the cross-sectional GLS estimation.Our results indicate that the gap of environmental regulations between trade partners has a positive relationship with pork trade flows,and the difference in environmental regulations changes the traditional comparative advantage pattern to some extent.This paper provides convincing evidence for the pollution haven effect on livestock in China.

Does strict environmental regulation enhance the global value chains position of China's industrial sector?

Given the vital importance of global value chains(GVCs)position for a country's international competitiveness,this paper tries to investigate the impacts of environmental regulation on the GVCs position of China's industrial sector.Using the latest value-added decomposition method,we first measure the GVCs position of China's industrial sector from 2003 to 2014.Subsequently,both two-stage least squares(2 SLS)method with panel data and mediating effect model are employed to empirically examine the effects of environmental regulation on China's position in GVCs.The results indicate that environmental regulation has significantly upgraded the GVCs position of China's industrial sector,and the effect is more evident for the sub-sectors with originally lower GVCs position.The mediation effect test shows that increasing R&D investment is an important channel through which environmental regulation affects the GVCs position of China's industrial sector,which verifies the existence of the Porter hypothesis.Further analysis finds that the enhancement of GVCs position of China's industrial sector caused by environmental regulation is mainly achieved through reducing the backward GVCs position.

How does government environmental regulation "unlock" carbon emission effect?——evidence from China

The disordered emission of carbon dioxide is an important sign of market failure, making it a must to "unlock" the high emission effect of carbon dioxide by effective means. From the perspective of technological innovation, on the basis of the data of time series from 1985 to 2014 in Beijing, China,this article empirically analyzed the relationship between environmental regulation and carbon emissions through VAR model, impulse response function, and variance decomposition. It is concluded that in a short term, environmental regulation has an inhibitory effect on carbon emissions and technological innovation and has a positive effect on industrial structure. In a long term,environmental regulation can enhance the technological innovation and reduce the effect of carbon emissions, which may even eliminate it. Generally, environmental regulation and technological innovation have a greater impact on carbon dioxide emissions, while the industrial structure has a relatively small effect. Finally, the targeted countermeasures and suggestions are put forward.

Cultivated land quantity niche regulation and its environmental effect

The change in the quantity of cultivated land influences the structure, function and evolvement of ecosystem. The rational change in the quantity of cultivated land will be propitious to ecological security and sustainable development, and irrational change will deteriorate ecological environment. The concept of cultivated land quantity niche regulation was firstly put forward based on niche theory and the action-feedback mechanism between cultivated land quantity niche and cultivated land benefit niche. Then, the regulation measures of cultivated land quantity niche were brought forward in rural-urban area, agro-forest area and consolidation-reclamation-exploitation area. Finally, the ecological environmental effect after regulation was analyzed. The results show that different measures should be taken to regulate cultivated land quantity niche in different areas. The economic and social benefit niche of cultivated land should be promoted to regulate cultivated land quantity niche in rural-urban area and consolidation-reclamation-exploitation area. The social benefit niche of cultivated land should be reduced in agro-forest area. The regulation goal of cultivated land quantity niche will be attained by different measures.

Spatial Effect of Environmental Regulation on Carbon Emissions

Based on Chinese provincial panel data from 2003 to 2014,the spatial dependence between the environment regulation and carbon emissions is tested by spatial autocorrelation analysis. Besides,spatial lag model and spatial error model are built to empirically test the marginal effect of environmental regulation on carbon emissions and its spatial effect. The result shows that the influence trajectory of environmental regulation on carbon emissions performances inverted ＂ U＂ type. It is ＂ green paradox effect＂ before the inflection point and ＂ reversed transmission reduction effect＂ after the inflection point. Moreover,the carbon emissions show significant spatial spillover effect. In order to achieve the desired effect of environmental regulation and promote carbon reduction,we should increase the environmental regulation intensity reasonably,select rational environmental regulation policy tools,and sufficiently consider the spatial spillover effect of carbon emissions.

Impact of environmental regulations on the efficient control of industrial pollution in China

The continuous progress of industrialization is a fundamental cause of China’s increasingly severe environmental pollution problem.Improving the efficiency of industrial pollution control is an inevitable choice to effectively decrease pollution emissions,thus winning the battle of pollution prevention and control.In this paper,we used the stochastic frontier analysis(SFA)model to measure the provincial efficiency of industrial pollution control based on the input and output data of industrial pollution control of 29 administrative provinces in China from 2000 to 2017.On this basis,a spatial econometric model was used to explore the influence of environmental regulation intensity on the efficiency of industrial pollution control.In addition,the spatial spillover effect of pollution reduction was thoroughly examined.The results show that:(1)The efficiency of industrial pollution control in China has improved year by year,but the overall efficiency is still low,with the average value increasing from 0.165 in 2000 to 0.309 in 2017.Furthermore,there is significant regional heterogeneity with the highest efficiency level in the east and lowest efficiency level in the west.(2)By increasing the financial and material input,the efficiency of industrial pollution control has increased.However,the increase of human input has not been so helpful.(3)The global Moran’s I index is significantly greater than zero,indicating a strong spatial correlation and agglomeration in the efficiency of industrial pollution control,which is reflected in high-high agglomeration in the eastern region and low-low agglomeration in the western region.(4)Stringent environmental regulation has a positive effect on improving the efficiency of industrial pollution control.It also imposes a positive spatial spillover effect,indicating a strategic interaction and coordination of regional pollution control.In line with this,related proposals have been made to optimize the investment structure for environmental pollution control,establish a flow mechanism for the factor market,and strengthen the environmental responsibility awareness of state-owned enterprises.On this basis,we expect to provide a policy for improving the efficiency of industrial pollution control and promoting regional joint pollution control in China.

An empirical study on the relationship between Chinese environmental regulation and economic growth

To achieve sustainable and healthy economic development,it is necessary for Chinese government to regulate the environment.Therefore,it has important significance to study the relationship between environmental regulation and economic growth.This paper deals with the method of measuring the Chinese provincial panel data from 2010 to 2018 to carry on the empirical analysis.The results show that environmental regulation in the eastern region has no significant negative effect for economic growth,to the central and western regions is a significant role in promoting economic growth.Finally,this article puts forward targeted policy suggestions based on the research results.

Infl uence of environmental regulation intensity on regional technology innovation: An empirical research based on eastern and mid-China region

This paper adopts the comprehensive index method to build environmental regulation intensity index. Based on "Porter Hypothesis", it empirically examines the relationship between environmental regulation intensity and regional technology innovation using the eastern and mid-China region's provincial panel data from 2005 to 2013 and panel data method. The results show that:(1) In the eastern and central regions, the relationship between the intensity of environmental regulation and technological innovation presents a "U" shape, and "Porter Hypothesis" can be verifi ed;(2) The eastern region can break "U" infl ection point earlier than the central region. Therefore, the government should not only strengthen the intensity of environmental regulation, but also pay attention to environmental regulation form, formulate reasonable environmental regulation policy, actively guide the enterprises to seek out technology innovation in order to realize win-win situation of environmental protection and economic development.

How Does Environmental Regulation Affect Carbon Emissions? —Evidence from China

In this paper, the increment of CO2 emissions from 285 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2013 is decomposed into scale effect, composition effect and technique effect. Based on the decomposition results, the effects of different environmental regulation on carbon emission increment and its decomposition effect were studied by using multiple regression methods. The results show that carbon emission environmental regulation, sulfur dioxide emission environmental regulation and electricity prices also significantly reduce the city’s carbon emissions, in which carbon emission reduction environmental regulation has the best effect, followed by sulfur dioxide emission reduction environmental regulation. Different environmental regulations do not significantly reduce urban carbon emissions in terms of composition effects, and even increase carbon emissions of cities. In addition, the impacts of different environmental regulations on the cities in the two control zones and the non-control zone were studied. Compared with non-control zone cities, environmental regulations for carbon emission and SO2 have a better effect on carbon emission reduction in cities of two control zones.

The influence of heterogeneous environmental regulation on the green development of the mining industry: empirical analysis based on the system GMM and dynamic panel data model

The intensity of environmental regulation (ERI) affects the short-term effect of the level of green mining (GML),and which structure determines the long-term mechanism.Based on the panel data from 2001 to 2015,with the dynamic panel model and system GMM estimation method were employed to test the influence of heterogeneous environmental regulation on green mining and its transmission mechanism.The results show that,there is a 'U' type nonlinear relationship between the ERI and GML.The direct effect of command-control-based (CAC) and the market incentive-based (MBI) environmental regulation on green development of mining shows the characteristics of inhibition and promotion.There is a 'U' type of indirectly moderating effect between technological innovation and the energy consumption structure on the GML.The technological innovation promotes the green development of the mining industry only after pass the inflection point of MBI,while the CAC plays a significant guiding role in upgrading of the energy consumption structure.There is an inhibition and promotion effect of MBI on the GML in the southeast coastal area,and the CAC is not significantly.Meanwhile,both of the ERI shows no positive effects in the central and western inland region.

The impact of environmental regulation on total factor productivity of firms:An analysis based on technical distance

Most studies on environmental policy and total factor productivity(TFP)growth under the heterogeneity framework tend to ignore the distance to the technical frontier,while research that investigates TFP growth based on technical distances does not tend to consider environmental policy.To fill this research gap,this study investigates the impact of environmental regulation on the total factor productivity of heterogeneous firms,based on technical distance.In addition to theoretical analysis,we apply a two-direction fixed effects model to test the impact using firm-level data selected from the CSMAR database and environmental regulation data of 287 Chinese cities between 2007 and 2015.We report two major findings from our analysis.First,environmental regulation increasingly enhances(or hinders)TFP growth,as firms get closer to(or further away from)the country-industry technology frontier,ceteris paribus.Second,grouped regression further highlights that environmental regulation affects TFP growth for heterogeneous firms.For proximal-type firms,environmental regulation promotes the growth of TFP through innovation and imitation mechanisms,while only the imitation mechanism works for middle-type firms.Neither mechanism,however,applies to distal-type firms,for whom environmental regulation hinders TFP growth.These conclusions provide a theoretical and practical basis for environmental policy,suggesting that the focus should be directed toward improving exit mechanisms for distal-type firms,creating a favorable market environment to accelerate the convergence of middle-type firms to the frontier,and encouraging proximal-type firms to innovate to catch up with or surpass the global frontier.

Can environmental regulations achieve both profitability and profit quality?A natural experiment based on the China Cleaner Production Standards

Numerous studies evaluated the effects of end-of-pipe control environmental regulations(EER).However,few scholars discussed the effects of process management environmental regulations(PER),such as the China Cleaner Production Standards(CCPS)implemented by the country's Ministry of Ecology and Environment.Using data on China's manufacturing enterprises,this paper adopts the CCPS policies as quasi-natural experiments and uses differences-in-differences(DID)methods to analyze their effects on enterprise profitability and profit quality,respectively.The results show that:first,the CCPS significantly improve both profitability and profit quality;that is,the implementation of the environmental regulation policy plays a significant role in improving enterprise profit rates and cash flows.Second,for the profitability mediator effects,the short-term Porter effect of CCPS is not significant but shows the opposite during the lag period and significantly reduces the management cost and wage levels,comprehensively promoting enterprise profitability.Third,for the profit quality meditator effects,environmental regulations improve the enterprises'cash flow by reducing management costs and increasing government subsidies;however,its effect on bank credit subsidies is not significant.Fourth,for the moderator effects,the environmental regulations'effect on enterprises profitability and profit quality depends on the strategic interaction among local governments,the scale and ownership of the enterprise,and regional differences.That is,the strategic interaction weakens the effect of environmental regulations on enterprise performance.Environmental regulations have a stronger influence on profitability and profit quality for large-scale,state-owned,and coastal enterprises.

Environmental regulation,hidden economy,and China's outward foreign direct investment

The need to balance economic growth and its environmental impact continues to be a serious issue in China.As environmental regulation in China increases in importance,it is critical to understand how it impacts economic growth drivers such as outward foreign direct investment(OFDI)to formulate effective policies.One consideration should be the hidden economy,which can weaken the effects of environmental regulation on OFDI.This study investigates the scale of the hidden economy in 30 provinces and province-level municipalities in China in the period 2004 to 2015.The study uses the multiple indicators and multiple causes(MIMIC)model and the systematic generalized method of moments(GMM)test to analyze the impact of environmental regulation and the hidden economy on China's OFDI.The results show that stronger environmental regulation promotes OFDI.However,the hidden economy inhibits China's OFDI,as the positive effects of environmental regulation that drive OFDI are distorted.From a regional perspective,stronger environmental regulation promotes OFDI as well,while the hidden economy inhibits it.The interaction between environmental regulation and the hidden economy also inhibits it significantly.