| The United States and other developed countries have completed their industrialization process,and now have the first-mover advantage to seize the opportunities for green transformation.The United Nations2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement continue to advance,and the world has reached a consensus on carbon neutrality.As the largest developing country with a super-large scale economy,China actively participates in global environmental governance,demonstrating its responsibility as a major responsible country.On the other hand,China takes domestic recycling as the main body,forms a backforcing mechanism through strict environmental constraints,promotes domestic industrial structural reform,and promotes the transformation of Chinese industry to high-end green.And actively move towards the middle and high end of the global value chain to enhance its position and competitiveness in the international cycle.In this context,China is facing severe challenges in the three fields of economic development,environmental governance and climate change.How to coordinate and balance economic development,environmental governance and climate change is still the focus of academic circles and policy makers.Micro-agent heterogeneity has become one of the important features of frontier macroeconomic research in the past 15 years,and the application of heterogeneous firm theory in economic growth,international trade and other fields is also becoming more and more perfect.On the contrary,most of the theoretical basis or specific methods used in environmental policy research remain at the national,industrial or regional level,and it is even more rare to embed environmental policy into the theoretical framework of heterogeneous firms for analysis.In addition,the existing theoretical hypotheses or arguments about environmental policies generally originate from the historical phenomena and development experience of developed countries,while the research on environmental policies of developing countries is still in the stage of discovering basic facts and key issues.Based on the above practical and theoretical background,this paper combined with the theoretical mechanism analysis and causal inference analysis framework of heterogeneous enterprise model,and adopted micro-databases such as China Industrial enterprise database,China patent database,China Polluting Enterprise emission database,and China Customs database to demonstrate from the following three points: First,explore the relevant characteristic facts that China’s environmental policies affect the production and operation performance,pollution emission performance and export performance of microenterprises;Second,combining the characteristics of different types of environmental policies,describe or elaborate the micro-mechanism of different types of environmental policies affecting the economic variables or environmental variables of related enterprises;Thirdly,it empirically tests the technological innovation effect,carbon(emission)leakage effect and pollution refuge effect of different types of environmental policies from the dimensions of enterprise level,inter-enterprise level and intra-enterprise product level,and explores the differential impact of different types of environmental policies on different characteristic subjects in the practice process through multidimensional heterogeneity analysis.This paper selects three types of environmental policies with typical Chinese characteristics,focusing on the three core issues of "Porter hypothesis","carbon leakage" and "pollution refuge effect".First,is the Porter hypothesis of green credit policy,which has the dual characteristics of financial resource allocation function and environmental regulation,comprehensive coverage and soft constraint characteristics,valid?Second,does the assessment policy of energy efficiency target responsibility of key energy-using enterprises with typical scale-dependent characteristics,incomplete regulatory characteristics and hard constraints cause carbon leakage from regulated enterprises to unregulated enterprises in the industry?Third,in the case that all of China’s major trading partners have implemented full export tax rebate policies,China’s continuous reduction of export tax rebates for "high energy consumption and high pollution" products is equivalent to unilateral imposition of export tariffs on "high energy consumption and high pollution" products,will it cause pollution refuge effect? In this paper,the green credit policy introduced in July 2007,the "thousand enterprises energy-saving action" implemented in 2006,and the export tax rebate policy of "high energy consumption and high pollution" products continuously lowered from 2004 to 2007 are selected as quasi-experiments.Based on Melitz’s(2003)heterogeneous firm model or multi-product firm theory,the theoretical mechanism analysis is carried out,and the theoretical hypothesis is verified through causal inference research.The main conclusions are as follows:First,the weak version of the "Porter hypothesis" of green credit policy fails,which significantly inhibits the technological innovation of high-polluting enterprises.The mechanism analysis shows that the superposition of compliance cost effect and credit constraint effect is the main mechanism of green credit policy to inhibit the innovation of high-polluting enterprises.Heterogeneity analysis shows that green credit policies have significant asymmetrical effects on different types of high-polluting enterprises.The negative impact on technological innovation of large-scale state-owned enterprises with low degree of financial marketization,low proportion of fixed assets and high dependence on capital factors is more significant.Second,the energy efficiency target responsibility assessment policy of key energy-using enterprises with "thousand enterprises" as the regulatory object causes significant positive carbon leakage in the quartile industry where the regulated enterprises are located,which is specifically manifested as a significant increase in direct carbon dioxide emissions of unregulated enterprises in the same quartile industry.The mechanism analysis verified that resource reallocation caused by industry equilibrium price adjustment is the main mechanism of carbon leakage caused by this policy.Heterogeneity analysis shows that intraindustry carbon leakage effect is different due to the characteristics of different industries(enterprises),such as the degree of product difference,the degree of tradability of the industry,the technological gap of the industry,the comparative advantage of the industry,the initial scale of the enterprise and the degree of external financing constraints.Third,the continuous reduction of the export tax rebate rate of "high energy consumption and high pollution" products has promoted the adjustment of the structure of export products of enterprises,which is reflected in the reduction of the export scale of "high energy consumption and high pollution" products,the probability of "high energy consumption and high pollution" products being added to the product has significantly decreased and the probability of being eliminated has significantly increased.The mechanism analysis shows that the reduction of export tax rebate rate increases the marginal production cost of "high energy consumption and high pollution" products.Due to the incomplete cost pass-through effect,even if the increase of export price of "high energy consumption and high pollution" products can partially offset the negative impact of the reduction of export tax rebate rate,export enterprises must bear part of the cost that cannot be transferred out.The reduction of export tax rebate rate significantly inhibited the improvement of product quality and total factor productivity of "high energy consumption and high pollution" products.The superposition of the above double effects is the main mechanism of the pollution refuge effect caused by the reduction of the export tax rebate rate of "high energy consumption and high pollution" products.The heterogeneity analysis of product dimension shows that the non-core "high energy consumption and high pollution" products with high tradability,high elasticity of trade cost and high impact on export tax rebate rate reduction are relatively more obvious.In terms of theoretical and empirical analysis,based on the heterogeneous firm theory,this paper explores the mechanism by which China’s environmental policies affect micro-firm performance from the firm level,inter-firm level and intra-firm product level,and makes use of China’s rapidly developing microdatabase and increasingly perfect causal identification methods.It can more accurately judge whether there is a causal relationship between environmental policies and key economic variables or environmental variables,and more accurately identify the mechanism by which environmental policies affect micro-enterprise performance.In terms of practical significance,on the one hand,China’s leading role in global environmental governance and climate response has become increasingly prominent.Summarizing China’s practical experience in environmental protection and climate change response can provide Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions for the "Belt and Road" and South-South countries and regions.On the one hand,China and other developing countries have a lot in common in terms of economic fundamentals and a series of development problems.Taking China as a typical sample and studying,summarizing and refining the internal logic of environmental policies and economic development from China’s experience facts,it is more in line with the reality of developing countries and has more reference significance for developing countries to balance economic development and environmental protection. |
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