Impact Assessment Of The Clean Air Action Plan On Economic Activities

Since the Reform and Opening-up,the leap-forward development of China’s economy and society has created one "Chinese miracle" after another.The environmental pollution problems brought about by rapid development broke out with accumulation and spread across the country,seriously threatening the survival and development of the people,and becoming the bottleneck and shackles of China’s highquality development path.Since there exist the externality and the characteristic of public goods in environmental pollution,the government needs to be proactive and provide effective environmental regulation.However,government intervention will inevitably have impacts on economic activities.The Clean Air Action Plan promulgated and implemented in 2013 is a successful paradigm in the process of pollution control in China,so it will provide a realistic basis and opportunity for research on environmental regulation and economic development.Based on the unified framework of economic growth theory and the specific measures of the Clean Air Action Plan,this paper started from the endogenous drivers of labor,capital,energy,and technology,then evaluated the policy effect of environmental regulation on economic growth.(1)From the industrial structure optimization,this paper explores the changes in labor demand at the city level under the policy impact,and combines the mechanism analysis to clarify the transfer path of the policy effect on employment and the dynamic changes of capital investment during the policy period.(2)From the effective utilization of energy,this paper measures the energy efficiency and total factor energy productivity of the industrial 2-digit sector at the provincial level.To analyze and quantify the impact of environmental regulation on energy productivity,the quasi-experiment based on the three dimensions of time,region,and sector was constructed.(3)From the factor allocation of energy,this paper takes the natural gas market as an example to measure the degree of energy price distortion,and evaluates the price mechanism reform under the requirements of the Clean Air Action Plan.(4)From the green innovation development,this paper uses two aspects of green patent quantity and quality to measure China’s green innovation activities and the level of environment-friendly technology,which is based on patent classification characteristics and patent data information.To verify the green technology innovation effect of the Clean Air Action Plan,a counterfactual framework was established.The empirical results and theoretical analysis show that the Clean Air Action Plan ensures the realization of air pollution control goals through three pathways:industrial structure adjustment,clean and efficient utilization of energy,and green technology advancement.On the one hand,the policy has significantly reduced industrial labor and capital investment,therefore limiting the industrial scale and new production capacity of the industrial sector.On the other hand,environmental regulation hasn’t only effectively promoted the improvement of energy productivity and factor allocation efficiency,but also stimulated green technology innovation activities.On the whole,environmental regulation has promoted the transformation of China’s economic development from a labor-intensive,low-end model to a technology-intensive,clean and efficient model.The policy effects on economic activities show hysteresis and gradualness.The economic impacts are mainly concentrated after 2015 and gradually become prominent,which is consistent with the process of policy implementation and promotion.Moreover,the economic effects of environmental regulation are heterogeneous across regions,sectors,and technology fields,which reflects the focus and direction of the policy.Based on the results of policy evaluation and the relevant findings in the research process,this paper attempts to explain the relevant issues in the economic operation under environmental regulation,and puts forward targeted policy recommendations.