Economic Effect Of Low-carbon City Pilot Policy

With the continuous development of the economy,climate warming and greenhouse effect have become an important issue that cannot be ignored.Developing the low-carbon economy has also received widely attention of all countries.As the world’s largest manufacturing country and the country with the highest carbon emissions,China has actively undertaken the responsibility of a major country in addressing climate change and has taken carbon reduction as an important task in the construction of national ecological civilization and high-quality development.As such,the impact of China’s low-carbon policy on economic growth needs further analysis and discussion.This study takes the low-carbon city pilot policy as a case to examine the actual impact and mechanism of this policy on economic growth.In 2010,the central government of China issued and subsequently launched three batches of 87low-carbon pilot provinces and cities,including Guangdong,Liaoning,Hubei,Shaanxi,Yunnan,Hainan,Tianjin,Chongqing,Shenzhen,and Xiamen,etc.Based on the above background,this paper takes the data of county-level cities and municipal districts from 2000 to 2017 as the research sample to comprehensively investigate the impact of low-carbon city pilot policy on the economic growth.Firstly,this paper uses the difference-in-differences model to investigate the impact of lowcarbon city pilot policies on economic growth and carbon emission,and conducts a variety of robustness tests on the research conclusions through parallel trend test,propensity score matching and other means.Secondly,the mechanisms of the policy in the pilot regions are also analyzed,including factor input scale,technical efficiency and industrial structure.Finally,considering that the differences in the regulation intensity of low carbon targets may also bring different policy effects,this study also examined the heterogeneous differences in the impact of policies on the economic growth of pilot areas under different intensity of low carbon targets.This research finds that:(1)Compared with non-pilot regions,the low-carbon pilot policy has significantly promoted the economic development of the pilot regions while curbing the increased carbon emissions.The finding shows that the implementation of the policy can improve the quality of development to a certain extent,making it possible to achieve the double goals of decreasing carbon emissions and improving economic level.After a series of robustness tests,this conclusion is proved to be reliable.(2)Low-carbon pilot regions can improve the quality of development by increasing the scale of labor and capital inputs,improving technical efficiency and promoting industrial structure upgrading.This conclusion provides important development ideas for cities undergoing low-carbon transformation.(3)There are obvious differences in the economic growth results of the low-carbon city pilot policy in different regions of China The effect of the policy on the economy of the eastern region is greater than that of the central and western regions The higher the carbon intensity reduction target issued by the central government to the local governments,the stronger the policy will promote the economic growth of the pilot regions.The above conclusion means that,the successful experience of pilot regions should be actively promoted nationwide in the future,and the experience should be formed into a demonstration effect by refining the pilot experience and forming typical cases.In addition,the central government facilitates the economic growth of the pilot regions by providing fiscal,tax and financial assistance to increase factor investment and encourage technological innovation,which will deliver power for economic growth.In addition,the effect of the low-carbon city pilot policy shows large difference in different regions of China.Therefore,local governments should carry out reasonable and feasible low-carbon policy innovation based on local economic development,technology and industry advantages,and further promote carbon emission reduction and economic development through the combination of various tools.