The Impact Of Carbon Financial Trading Policies On Corporate Green Innovation

Under the background of the continuous development of green finance and market-oriented environmental regulation,the 13 th Five-Year Plan points out that it is necessary to “establish and improve the initial distribution system of energy use right,water use right,emission right and carbon emission right,and cultivate and develop the trading market”.In order to realize the solemn commitment of “carbon peak” in 2030 and“carbon neutralization” in 2060,China has been working hard to draw a grand blueprint for green development and innovative development,taking the initiative to act,striving to achieve the dual policy objectives of “green water and green mountains” and “golden mountains and silver mountains”,and actively contributing to the development of global low-carbon economy.Carbon financial trading policy is an effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.Since the policy was piloted in China in June 2013,many scholars have carried out researches from many aspects,such as system design,carbon financial trading market efficiency,energy utilization efficiency,the impact of the policy on total factor productivity,and the impact of the policy on industrial structure.However,due to the availability of data,few literatures have explored the policy effects of carbon financial transactions from the perspective of enterprise green innovation.Based on this,this paper tries to select the number of green patent applications of enterprises as A proxy variable to measure green innovation of enterprises,and empirically tests the effect of carbon financial transaction policies on green innovation of micro enterprises by taking China’s A-share listed enterprises from 2006 to 2019 as the research object.The results show that: first of all,carbon financial trading policy significantly promotes the level of green innovation of enterprises on the whole,and compared with the number of green enterprise invention patent applications,the policy has a significant role in promoting the number of green utility model patent applications.Secondly,after a series of robustness tests,such as parallel trend hypothesis testing,changing indicators for measuring green technology innovation,two-stage model testing,and excluding confounding policy factors,the research conclusion still holds.Thirdly,the test results of the regulatory effect on the carbon intensity of the industry show that the differences between the carbon financial trading pilot policies in the high-carbon emission industries and low-carbon emission industries do not appear yet.The possible reason is that the policy is still in the pilot stage,and the scale and activity of carbon trading market are not enough.On the other hand,this is also related to the path-dependence of some high-carbon enterprises in technological innovation,which requires high cost and a long period of time to transform from high-carbon technology to low-carbon technology.In addition,heterogeneity analysis shows that at the regional level,pilot policies have a greater inducement effect on green innovation of enterprises in the eastern region than those in the central and western regions,which may be due to the early economic take-off,good resource endowment and high innovation atmosphere in the eastern region.At the enterprise level,pilot policies have a greater inducement effect on green technology innovation of state-owned enterprises than non-state-owned enterprises,possibly because state-owned enterprises are less constrained by financing and account for a higher proportion in the list of carbon emission trading enterprises.At the same time,pilot policies have a greater inducement effect on green technological innovation in large-scale enterprises than in small-scale enterprises.The possible reason is that large-scale enterprises have more green innovation resources,lower capital cost for R＆D investment and higher conversion rate of innovation results.Finally,based on the empirical research results,this paper summarizes the whole paper,and puts forward relevant policy suggestions in four aspects: formulating a more specific guidance program for technological transformation,strengthening the supervision and inspection of regulators,increasing the investment in green research and development,and continuing to improve the carbon price formation mechanism.