| Since the reform and opening-up,China has made great achievements in the development of industry.However,in the process of the rapid growth of China's industrial scale,the ?extensive? development model which depends on the input of production factors has not been effectively changed.The phenomenon of high input,energy-consumption and emissions causes serious damage to China's ecological environment.China needs to realize green economic growth through industrial transformation and upgrading.Environmental regulation is not only a means of correcting the market failure,but also an important measure to promote industrial transformation and upgrading.However,the environmental regulation can not be used in one size fits all approach due to the uneven development of regional industry in industrial scale and industrial structure.The difference in factor input structure of heterogeneity industry leads to the huge difference in the mechanism of environmental regulation.Therefore,fully considering China's industrial development and regional characteristics,and accurately answering whether environmental regulation drives the industry to achieve transformation and upgrading can help to provide a theoretical basis for formulating and implementing differentiated environmental policies in China.The "Pollution Haven Hypothesis" argues that strict environmental regulation will lead industries to the more relaxed environment,therefore,the difference in the intensity of regional environmental regulation will have an important impact on the type and degree of industrial agglomeration in different regions,so how will the changes in regional industrial agglomeration affect the industrial transformation and upgrading ?According to the connotation,industrial transformation and upgrading is mainly reflected in the progress of production technology and the upgrading of industrial internal structure.The progress of production technology is an internal agent to achieve industrial transformation and upgrading,it can also reflect the dynamic process of industrial transformation and upgrading.The adjustment and optimization of the whole industrial structure which is reflected by the upgrading of industrial internal structure can be seen as the results of industrial transformation and upgrading.This article studies the impact of environmental regulation on industrial transformation and upgrading mainly from the above two aspects,as well as the mediating effect of industrial agglomeration in industrial transformation and upgrading.With respect to the impact of environmental regulation on industrial transformation and upgrading,a consensus has still not been reached in the existing research.The differences mainly resulted from the lack of research on the mechanism of environmental regulation policy in the heterogeneous industry.Essential difference exists in factor input structure of heterogeneous industries,but the influence of the difference on the adjustment of production technology has been ignored in most of the available literature.Based on this,from the perspective of factor input structural difference in the heterogeneous industry,this paper firstly reveals the mathematical relationship and mechanism between environmental regulation to industrial agglomeration and industrial transformation and upgrading.Then,the paper uses the provincial panel data in China from 2003 to 2014 of 35 industries.On the basis of industry classification,the paper empirically tests the impact of environmental regulation on industrial agglomeration and industrial transformation and upgrading by the system GMM estimation method,and tests the influence of the economic development level on the relationship between environmental regulation and industrial agglomeration by the panel threshold model.Furthermore,this paper examines the mediating effect of industrial agglomeration.Main conclusions are as follows:The first is the impact of environmental regulation on industrial agglomeration.The impact of environmental regulation on industrial agglomeration in a certain region is a dynamic process of adaptation,it is not only related to the intensity of environmental regulation,but also affected by the different intensity of inter-regional environmental regulation.In the current phase of economy and environmental regulation development in our country,the impacts of environmental regulation on the agglomeration of cleaning industries and pollution intensive industries in the eastern region all present the feature of "U".While in the central region,the impacts of environmental regulation on the agglomeration of cleaning industries and pollution intensive industries present the inverted U-shape relationship.Moreover,in western China,the impact of environmental regulation on the agglomeration of pollution intensive industries has the feature of inverted U-shape,while it has no significant relationship on the agglomeration of cleaning industries.In addition,The threshold panel model test results show that environmental regulation has significant threshold effects on industrial agglomeration.When the economic level is low,environmental regulation will promote industrial agglomeration;with the improvement of the economic level,the impact of environmental regulation on industrial agglomeration presents the trend of decreasing first and then rising.The second is the impact of environmental regulation on industrial transformation and upgrading.The impact of environmental regulation on the progress of production technology mainly depends on the relative strength among the following cost effect,investment distortion effect and technology incentive effect in different stages of environmental regulation.Whether the environmental regulation policies could promote the upgrading of the industrial structure depends on the relative magnitudes of the impact of environmental regulation on production technology progress of the two types of industries,and that is determined by different economic effects of environmental regulation caused by the input structure difference.(1)The impacts of environmental regulation on the production technique progress of cleaning industries and pollution intensive industries all present U-shape feature.It shows that the environmental regulation policies will restrain the progress of production technology under low intensity of environmental regulation,but when the intensity exceeds the "U" curve inflection point,the environmental regulation policies can promote the progress of production technology.In the inspection of different regions and industries,the study found that the intensity of environmental regulation which corresponds to U type curve inflection point in the cleaning industry is lower than that in the pollution intensive industry,which is mainly resulted from factor input structural differences of the two industries.In addition,the intensity of environmental regulation corresponding to U curve inflection point of the two types of industries in the eastern region is lower than that in the central and western regions.The threshold effect test results show there are double thresholds on the impact of environmental regulation on the production technological progress of two types of industries.Only through the certain stage of economic development,environmental regulation can promote the production technology progress.(2)The influence of environmental regulation on industrial structure upgrading presents the feature of U-shape,this is because that the investment distortion effect of environmental regulation in pollution intensive industries within a short time is stronger than technology incentive effect under low environmental regulation intensity,thereby making up for the impact of environmental regulation on economic output of pollution intensive industries to a certain extent,and environmental regulation can restrain the upgrading of industrial structure.But the rate of production technology progress is higher in cleaning industry in long-term,and environmental regulation can promote the upgrading of industrial structure.In the inspection of different regions,the study found that in eastern,central and western regions,the intensity of environmental regulation corresponding to U curve inflection point rises in turn,which demonstrates that there are significant regional differences in the impact of environmental regulation policies on industrial structure upgrading.In addition,the threshold effect test results show there is a single threshold on the impact of environmental regulation on industrial structure upgrading.Only through the certain stage of economic development,environmental regulation can promote the industrial structure upgrading.The third part is the mediation effect of industrial agglomeration.There are certain industrial and regional differences in the mediation effect of industrial agglomeration on production technology progress.To be specific,both in the cleaning and pollution intensive industry,there is a partial mediation effect of industrial agglomeration in the eastern respectively,but not in the central and western regions region.The main reason for the above results is the agglomeration of pollution intensive industries caused by the difference of inter-regional environmental regulation intensity in the central and western regions,which leads to the industrial transfer to the weaker regions of environmental regulation,thus it hardly produces the technology spillover effect on this occasion.The mediation effect of industrial agglomeration in upgrading the industrial structure also has regional differences,no matter in the eastern,central and western regions,industrial agglomeration exerts a partial mediation effect.The effect is active in the eastern regions,but in the central and western regions,the role is negative.Finally,this article puts forward policy recommendations of environmental regulation in the light of the research conclusions.Increasing the intensity of environmental regulation further,implementing differentiated forms of environmental regulation,improving the investment and financing environment,and stimulating technical effects can help to promote industrial transformation and upgrading in different regions of our country. |
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