| Carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of climate change.As the largest carbon emitter,the establishment of China's carbon emission trading system has an important impact on achieving the global carbon dioxide emissions control goal.The emission trading system(ETS)is a top-down key policy tool to deal with climate change through free trading of carbon emission quota in the market.It mainly includes the coverage area,total amount setting,allocation mechanism,transaction mechanism,compliance and offset mechanism,monitoring,reporting,and verification mechanism.In order to effectively control the total emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases,the Chinese government started to carry out a pilot ETS project in Beijing,Tianjin,Shanghai,Chongqing,Guangdong,Hubei and Shenzhen in 2013,and plans to gradually expand nationwide since December 2017.Then the total transaction volume will far exceed the current largest EU ETS.This paper mainly established a research framework for evaluating the implementation effects of the China's pilot ETS from the three dimensions of environment,economy,and technology.Firstly,combed the domestic and foreign literatures on the effects of environmental regulation,it summarized the research on evaluation of the implementation effects of the ETS from three aspects of environmental,economic,and technological.Secondly,introduced the theoretical basis of the ETS,using the "Porter Hypothesis" theory and the green economic growth theory to put forward that technological innovation is the implementation path to promote environmental protection and economic growth,analyzing the mechanism of the environmental,economic and technological effects of the ETS.Then,it explained the basic institutional elements of the ETS and inspired the gradually established national-level ETS in the future by comparing the foreign and Chinese pilot ETS.Finally,using the Propensity Score Matching-Difference in Differences model and the Biennial MalmquistLuenberger productivity index including undesired output to study the overall impact of China's ETS on the pilot areas and the impact of covered high-emission industrial subsectors from the three dimensions of environment,economy,and technology.The main research conclusions and works are as follows:(1)China's pilot ETS has achieved environmental benefits.The carbon dioxide emissions of the pilot ETS areas and the covered highemission industrial subsectors have decreased by 11.6% and 13.7%respectively.Technology factors and innovation factors are the key factors to promote emissions reduction.For example,environmental governance,energy efficiency,R&D structure,and R&D intensity have reduced carbon dioxide emissions to a certain extent;population size,per capita GDP,urbanization rate,and trade intensity are the main reasons for the increase of carbon dioxide emissions.(2)China's pilot ETS has produced positive economic effects at the regional level.However,further taking the high-emission industrial subsectors covered by the pilot areas as the research object,we found that GDP decreased by 4.0%,which did not completely achieve the“decoupling” of the environment and economy.Pilot ETS promoted the achievement of emission reduction targets in covered high-emission industrial subsectors.But the environmental governance costs may affect normal production activities and had a negative impact on economic development.Since pilot ETS areas include covered high-emission sectors and other sectors that are not covered,the ETS may allocates social resources to more efficient and low-carbon environmental protection sectors.To a certain extent,although it affects the development of the covered high-emission sectors,the effective distribution of the overall social resources has been realized.(3)With the introduction of green total factor productivity to evaluate the technological effect dimension of the pilot ETS,the research showed that China's pilot ETS has achieved technological progress.The green total factor productivity of the pilot ETS areas and the covered high-emission industrial subsectors increased by 2.3% and 9.7% respectively.Among them,the technology change indicators of the decomposition items increased by 4.0% and 21.2% respectively,which is the key to the increase of green total factor productivity.In this paper,we used the Biennial Malmquist-Luenberger Productivity Index,which included undesired output,to measure green total factor productivity,decomposed it into efficiency change indicator and technology change indicator,then substituted the Propensity Score Matching-Difference in Differences model to discuss the technological effect of China's pilot ETS.It is a relatively new research idea to evaluate the effects of policy implementation.In summary,China's pilot ETS is an effective emission reduction tool,which has significantly reduced carbon dioxide emissions,although it did not promote the low-carbon “decoupling” of environmental protection and economic growth in the high-emission industrial subsectors covered by the pilot areas.However,the green total factor productivity and technology change indicators of decomposition items have increased significantly,indicating that China's pilot ETS has promoted technological progress.Combined with the “Porter Hypothesis” theory and the green economic growth theory,it can be considered that China's pilot ETS has stimulated an “innovative compensation” effect,but it has not fully compensated for the “compliance costs” of the environmental governance of the covered high-emission industrial subsectors.Therefore,in the future,we should continue to expand the coverage of the pilot ETS,increased investment in technological innovation,further stimulated the “innovation compensation”effect,and formulated support and subsidy policies based on the differences in development endowments and economic structure of different regions and sectors,so as to provide empirical evidence for the smooth implementation of China's national ETS. |
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