SO₂ Emission Trading Mechanism And Enterprise Technological Innovation

China’s extensive growth of high energy consumption and high emissions has brought serious environmental pollution problems.In order to strengthen the construction of ecological environment and practice the concept of green development,the Chinese government began to adopt market-oriented environmental regulation to control pollution.In theory,environmental regulation can reduce emissions and promote high-quality economic development by forcing enterprises’technological innovation,but its effect in practice still needs to be further verified.Taking the S02emission trading pilot policy implemented by 11 provinces and cities in China in 2007as a quasi natural experiment,this paper discusses the role of emission trading system on enterprise technological innovation,and tests whether there is a"Porter Hypothesis"in China.Firstly,through the panel data of 304 prefecture level cities from 2003 to 2013,the effectiveness of the emission trading policy is tested.It is found that the emission trading policy significantly reduces the SO₂ emission in the pilot area and realizes the emission reduction effect.On this basis,taking the data of Chinese industrial enterprises from 2002 to 2013 as the research sample,this paper uses the double difference method to identify the causal relationship between the emission trading policy and enterprise technological innovation.The results show that compared with the regions where the policy is not implemented,the policy has an obvious promoting effect on the technological innovation in the pilot regions,and the Porter hypothesis is established.The estimation results of parallel trend test,psm-did test,placebo test,change time window test and counterfactual test verify the robustness of this conclusion.Further,based on the heterogeneity analysis of patent types,the results show that emission trading significantly promotes strategic innovation and substantive innovation,but has a greater impact on substantive innovation.Based on the heterogeneity analysis of enterprise ownership types,the results show that:the technological innovation of state-owned enterprises has no significant response to the emission trading policy,and the policy effect of technological innovation of private enterprises is significantly positive;The emission right policy can significantly promote the substantive innovation and strategic innovation of private enterprises,but it has a greater impact on the substantive innovation than the strategic innovation.The emission right has no significant effect on the substantive innovation and strategic innovation of state-owned enterprises.After determining the innovation effect of emission trading policy,it is further verified through mechanism analysis that emission trading promotes the technological innovation of enterprises by affecting the profitability of enterprises.Based on the above research conclusions,this paper puts forward policy enlightenment for China to implement emission trading in the future,and provides experience reference for market-oriented environmental regulation policies such as energy use right,water right,carbon emission right and so on.