A Study Of Regional Disparity In The Impact Of Environmental Regulation On Economic Growth

Since the Reform and Opening-up,with the extensive mode of economic development,the contradiction is increasingly prominent between economic growth and ecological environment quality.The carrying capacity of the environment has reached the upper limit at or near the ceiling.Therefore,how to realize the healthy interaction between the environmental improvement and the economic sustainable growth has become the important scientific problems in our effort to adapt to the new normal of economic development.At present,the Chinese government attaches great importance to environmental quality.In order to correctly handle the relationship between the economic development and ecological environment protection,Chinese governments claim that it is necessary to promote ecological civilization,and a number of policies related to the environmental pollution have be issued.Environmental regulation refers to the implementation of various policies and measures for the purpose of environmental protection.And it is an important means to solve the externality of environment pollution and correcting system failure.With the increasing intensity of environmental regulation,foreign and domestic researchers have done extensive researches on the relationship between environmental regulation and economic growth from different angles and the application theory and methods.However,academic circles have not reached a consensus on whether the environmental regulation can promote or hinder the regional economic growth.In fact,China is a geographically large country where there are obvious regional differences.There are apparently regional differences in the degree of marketization,environmental regulation tools selection,economic development condition,intensity of environmental regulation,etc.Therefore,this article aims to reveals the basic rule of environmental regulation and economic growth by focusing on how the regional environmental regulation affects economic growth in different areas and to what extent the effects are different in different areas.At the same time,the negative and positive effects of the environmental regulation on economic growth will be explained in the same framework in hopes that we can provide practical guidance for the coordinated development of environment and economy.First,the theoretical study of environmental pollution,environmental regulation and economic growth are reviewed so as to analyze the present situation of environmental pollution and the intensity of environmental regulation in China.Second,the impacts of environmental regulation on economic growth in different areas and transmission mechanism are studied empirically at the national level and the regional level.Thirdly,the threshold effect of the impact of environmental regulation on economic growth is studied empirically.Furthermore,it provides an explanation to the regional difference of the relationship between environmental regulation and economic growth.Finally,the paper has put forward feasible suggestions in terms of relevant policies.The conclusions of this paper are as follows:Firstly,there are significant differences in terms of the roles of environmental regulation in economic growth among three large regions of China.Environmental regulation exerts a marked promoting effect on the economic growth in eastern China,but it does not have positive effects on the central and western regions of China.Environmental regulation has indirect impacts on economic growth through technological innovation,opening-up and material capital.Secondly,there is a significant threshold effect in how the environmental regulation affects economic growth.When environmental regulation is less than a certain threshold value,it will greatly promote the regional economic growth.By contrast,when environmental regulation exceeds a certain threshold value,it will stunt the progress of economy.Thirdly,the degree of opening-up and the investment index of human capital and material capital play a very important role in the non-linear relationship between China’s environmental regulation and economic growth.Environmental regulation has stunted economic growth through creating the crowded-out effect on technical innovation,foreign trade dependence and the scale of government expenditure.The paper claims that there is a complex non-linear relationship between environmental regulation and economic growth.Whether the environmental regulation boosts or stunts the economic growth mainly depends on the intensity of environmental regulation,opening-up,human capital accumulation and the level of physical capital investment.Therefore,in order to promote the sustainable development of the economy and the protection of the environment,it is necessary to regulate the environment in a moderate way,expand the opening-up to the outside world and enhance the level of human capital accumulation and material capital investment,perfect the mechanism of environmental protection and the evaluation of economy development and enact environmental policies conforming to regional economic development.