Environmental Regulation,Technological Innovation And Economic Growth

With the continuous development of social economy,the contradiction between economic and environmental becomes more and more prominent.Three major crises of the global-resource shortage,environmental pollution and ecological damage are increasingly serious.How to properly coordinate the relationship between economic development and environmental protection has become a hot issue for government departments,enterprises and scholars.Due to the properties of public goods and externality of the environment,enterprises and scholars,the enterprises are guided by the maximization of profit under the domination of rational thinking,always instinctively ignoring the problem of environmental pollution,reluctant to abandon the traditional production mode,design the pollution reduction and environmental protection production technology to reduce the resources consumption and pollutant emissions to improve environmental efficiency,the market failure problems of environmental management become more and more important.In this context,the government-led environmental regulation policy has become a necessary tool to solve the problem of environmental governance market failure.The Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee put forward the five development concepts of "innovation,coordination,green,open and sharing".Green development and environmental protection have become an important strategic focus for China’s sustainable development in the future.However,as the differences between regional development in china are so big,the difficulty of environmental pollution control is also great.Therefore,in order to improve the efficiency of technological innovation and achieve regional sustainable development,we take the pilot project of "two-type construction"in Wuhan city circle as the research object,from the regional unit,according to local conditions,targeted to develop regional environmental policy.Wuhan city circle,consisted by Wuhan city-large city in the central region,and the urban agglomerated around the radius of about 100km within,is approved"Resource-saving" and "environment-friendly" two-type social construction comprehensive reform pilot area in December 2007 by the State Council.Because of its significant geographical advantages,as the central hub to open up the Yangtze River economic zone,Wuhan city circle has gradually become one of the hot-spots studied among the current urban economic and environmental issues.However,there are few studies on the problem how to make the concept of environmental regulation together with the economic development of Wuhan metropolitan area.Under the new normal economic development,the development of urban economy must further improve the level of regional coordinated development,change the mode of economic development and improve the efficiency of green growth.Based on the relevant theories of environmental regulation and research results,this paper describes the horizontal differences and the dynamic trends of economic development,and the implementation of environmental regulation policies of Wuhan city circle,analyses the mediating effect of technological innovation between environmental regulation and economy growth,it is of great significance to promote the construction of "two types" of Wuhan city circle and realize the benign interaction between environmental regulation and technological innovation and promote the sustainable development of the region.This study follows the logic of "environmental regulation and economic development status-the environmental mechanism of environmental regulation that affects economic growth-the empirical test of environmental regulation affecting economic growth-the research of countermeasures",and try to answer the following questions from the theoretical and empirical researches:the status quo of environmental regulation,technological innovation and economic growth of Wuhan city circle and what kind of problems exist in them?Does environmental regulation have a nonlinear relationship with technological innovation?Does the impact of environmental regulation on economic growth are based on technological innovation as an intermediary variable and what is the empirical relationship?How to formulate environmental regulation policies that contribute to technological innovation and economic development in Wuhan city circle?Based on the above logic,the core content of the study contains the following three aspects:First of all,the theoretical and empirical researches prove that environmental regulation affects technological innovation.(1)Theoretical level.It is generally believed that environmental regulation will stimulate enterprise innovation by changing the target constraints of enterprises and industrial organizations,but the author believes that the role of environmental regulation on technological progress still presents the characteristics of uncertainty,the specific role depends on the initial technology research and development path.If we have the initial green path of innovation,environmental regulation will promote technological progress,if we have the initial pollution-based innovation path,the environmental regulation in the short term will have an inhibitory effect on technological progress,mainly for the suppression of pollution-based technology and the promotion of clean production technology,promote the green production technology,and then promote long-term technological progress.In summary,environmental regulation has inhibited the technological progress of polluting production and promoted green technological progress.Green technological progress has not changed the intensity of environmental regulation,but has brought new demands to environmental regulation and measures.(2)The empirical level.Based on the non-radial non-angular SBM directional distance function,the influence of environmental regulation on technological innovation in Wuhan city circle is measured according to the Malmquist-Luenberger index adopted by Robert Chambers et al.,which confirms the dual role of environmental regulation in technological innovation in the short and long term.In the period from 2003 to 2007,the construction of Wuhan city circle was in the path of pollution-based technological innovation,and environmental regulation first showed a negative effect on technological progress,as production continued to turn to green,This negative effect has been decreasing,until the Wuhan city circle of production technology to green preferences,the environmental regulation began to play a positive role in promoting technological progress.In the second,the mediating effect of technological innovation between environmental regulation and economy growth.(1)Theoretical level.Based on the"Porter hypothesis",the study argues that environmental regulation can produce"innovation compensation" effect not only to offset the "follow the cost" of the enterprise,but also to generate additional economic development effect.Therefore,it is necessary to use the scientific and technological progress as the mediator to explain the relationship between environmental regulation and economic growth of Wuhan metropolitan area on the basis of the traditional Cobb Douglas production function.(2)The empirical level.The study uses Baron and Kenny’s three-step method to examine the economic development effects of environmental regulation and technological innovation interaction mechanism.It is found that although the impact of environmental regulation on economic growth in Wuhan city circle has individual effects,that is,there are differences in the impact of various urban environmental regulations on economic growth,and the coordination of urban development in the circle is poor,but the overall environmental regulation the urban economic growth has the mediating effect of technological progress.The mediating effect has been developed since 2007,and the reasonable environmental regulation policy of Wuhan city circle can lead to technological innovation,the number of patent licenses has increased obviously and brought about the effect of innovation compensation.This kind of innovation compensation effect more than the cost of environmental regulation,to enhance industrial performance and improve the level of regional economic growth.Finally,policy recommendations.In general,the study argues that environmental regulation may have a non-linear relationship with the pre-suppression of enterprise technological innovation,that is,the environmental regulation in the short term increases the "follow the cost" and inhibits innovation,but in the long term,by changing the enterprise’s target constraints and industrial organizations to stimulate business innovation;In the other hand,enterprise technology innovation will spawn a new environmental regulatory awareness and create more complex environmental regulatory requirements.In the future,the governance structure of environmental regulation in Wuhan city circle must improve the adminisrtrative functions of the current environmental protection departments and the misunderstanding of personnel rights,eliminate the "fragmented" environmental governance,promote the environmental regulatory technological innovation effect with the rising demand for environmental regulation created by technological innovation,establish the linkage mechanism of government to achieve dynamic institutional innovation.Therefore,this paper puts forward the following policy recommendations:the establishment of Wuhan city circle government linkage mechanism,coordination of the management departments,the effective implementation of institutional innovation;Adjust the industrial structure,coordinate the industrial layout;The construction of eco-city circle planning;The implementation of green GDP accounting system;Environmental governance policy innovation based on market orientation;To strengthen the daily supervision and management;To strengthen the diversification of environmental governance policy innovation.