| Over the past 40 years of reform and opening-up,China's rapid economic growth on one hand has indeed improved people's living standards,but on the other hand it has led to a substantial increase in environmental pollution and paid a huge environmental price.The traditional extensive growth mode of high investment,high energy consumption and high emission has become a bottleneck restricting the sustainable development of China's economy.Therefore,it is necessary to transform the economic development pattern,promote green total factor productivity(GTFP)growth,and achieve high-quality economic development.Because environmental resources have the characteristics of scarcity,public goods,and unclear property rights,it is challenging to address the environmental pollution by simply relying on the market mechanism.Therefore,environmental regulation policy has become an important tool to internalize the negative externalities of environmental pollution and improve the quality of economic growth.As the government pays unprecedented attention to environmental issues,the rules and regulations in environmental protection are gradually enriched,and the environmental regulation system is also constantly developed and improved.Hence,this study poses many questions that beg for answers and motivate future research.Can environmental regulation promote GTFP growth? If so,how is it achieved? Is there heterogeneity in the impact of different types of environmental regulations on GTFP growth in different regions? Do different types of environmental regulations have synergistic effects on GTFP growth?The main objective of this study is to explore the influence of environmental regulation on GTFP growth.Firstly,this study summarizes the relevant literature on environmental regulation and green total factor productivity at home and abroad,and defines the concepts of environmental regulation and green total factor productivity.Taking into view the theoretical foundation,this paper systematically explains the externality theory,property right theory,environmental regulation theory and green economic growth theory.Moreover,this study further constructs a theoretical model and influence mechanism framework to investigate the effect of environmental regulation on green total factor productivity.Secondly,this study employs the metafrontier super efficiency Epsilon Based Measure(EBM)model integrated with undesirable output and Malmquist Luenberger(ML)index to measure China's green total factor productivity.Based on the estimation techniques,the GTFP growth is described from both time and regional standpoints.Additionally,the evolution trend of green total factor productivity growth in China is evaluated through the ? Convergence,? Convergence,club convergence and stochastic convergence.Thirdly,utilizing the system generalized method of moments(SYS-GMM),this study empirically investigates the direct and indirect effects of environmental regulation on China's green total factor productivity growth.Moreover,the impact and synergistic effects of different types of environmental regulation tools on green total factor productivity growth are also analyzed.Finally,based on the research conclusions,this study further puts forward corresponding policy recommendations,which can optimize China's environmental regulation system,improve green total factor productivity and promote economic growth quality.The results of this study can be summarized in the following manner.(1)China's GTFP growth is found to initially decrease and then increase.Green technological change is the main source of China's green TFP growth.The green total factor productivity growth in coastal areas is higher than that in inland areas.(2)China's green total factor productivity growth shows a significant absolute ? Convergence,conditional ? Convergence,club convergence and stochastic convergence.However,it does not have the significant characteristic of ? convergence.(3)Environmental regulation has a significant positive direct impact on the green total factor productivity growth in China and coastal areas.These results have been verified through a series of robustness tests.(4)There are several intermediary paths of environmental regulation to promote China's GTFP growth.Environmental regulation can indirectly affect the green total factor productivity growth at whole sample level and across coastal areas by promoting the industrial structure rationalization,increasing foreign direct investment(FDI)quantity and FDI quality.In addition,environmental regulation can also promote the industrial structure advancement,encourage enterprises to strengthen green technology innovation and production technology innovation,in order to stimulate green total factor productivity in the whole country,coastal and inland areas.(5)The effects of different environmental regulations on GTFP growth in China are heterogeneous.There is a significant inverted U-shaped nexus between command-andcontrol environmental regulation(CER)and China's green total factor productivity growth;Market incentive environmental regulation(MER)exerts a significant negative impact on China's GTFP growth;Voluntary environmental regulation(VER)and China's green total factor productivity growth exhibits a U-shaped curve.(6)There is a significant positive synergistic effect between CER and MER on China's green total factor productivity growth.On the contrast,the synergistic effect between MER and VER is significantly negative.In addition,both the synergistic effects of CER and MER,CER and VER significantly promote the GTFP growth in inland areas.The synergistic effect of the three environmental regulations is also significantly positive in inland areas.The novelties of this study are as follows.(1)This study quantifies the quality and evolution characteristics of China's green economic growth.Based on the meta-frontier super efficiency EBM model with undesirable output and ML index,this study measures China's green total factor productivity growth,which can more accurately reflect the quality of China's green economic growth.Additionally,this study also adopts ? convergence,? convergence,club convergence and stochastic convergence to comprehensively investigates the convergence characteristics of China's green total factor productivity growth,so as to provide reference for the coordinated development of regional green economy.(2)This study also expands the theoretical framework to analyze the effect of environmental regulation on GTFP growth.By constructing an econometric model,this study not only analyzes the direct impact of environmental regulation on GTFP growth,but also investigates the indirect impacts from the three perspectives: industrial structure upgrading,technological innovation and foreign direct investment.This study further divides the three perspectives into six mediation paths,namely industrial structure rationalization,industrial structure advancement,green technological innovation,production technological innovation,FDI quantity and FDI quality,and explore the indirect transmission mechanism of environmental regulation on GTFP growth,thereby providing the comprehensive view on this subject.In addition,the validity of Porter Hypothesis and Pollution Halo Hypothesis in China is verified,which further enriches the related research content of environmental economics.(3)This paper examines the impact of heterogenous environmental regulations on green total factor productivity growth,and further analyzes their GTFP growth effect from the perspective of policy coordination.From the perspective of regional heterogeneity and regulatory tools heterogeneity,this study empirically discusses the impacts and synergy effects of different types of environmental regulations on GTFP growth in different regions through employing econometric models.Thereby,this paper puts forward policy optimization suggestions with application value,which can provide an effective reference for the government to achieve high-quality economic development and "two carbon" goals. |
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