Research On The Characteristics, Causes And Carbon Tax Mechanism Of Regional Production Carbon Emissions In My Countr

With the climate problem becoming increasingly prominent,carbon emission reduction has become the focus of common concern in the world.China has made solemn commitments at international conferences,showing a firm determination to reduce emissions and fully embodying the responsibility of a country.On September 22,2020,during the 75th United Nations General Assembly,China proposed to increase its nationally determined contributions,adopt more powerful policies and strive to reach the peak of CO₂by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.Carbon emission reduction is a systemic and structural issue.Considering the significant differences in the level of economic development and resource endowments among regions in China,the government needs to grasp the economic and carbon emission characteristics and differences of each region and then provide more comprehensive and accurate information support for carbon emission reduction policies.Therefore,research from a regional perspective can provide a richer microscopic view and has very important research value.As a market-based emission reduction strategy,carbon tax and carbon trading policies have been widely adopted by many countries and regions.China’s carbon emissions trading market（referred to as“carbon trading”）was officially implemented in early 2020.Affected by factors such as the limitation of coverage and the scope of regulation,the difficulty of constructing the price formation mechanism in the carbon market,carbon trading market alone may not effectively solve all the problems of China’s carbon emission reduction.Compared with carbon trading,the coverage of carbon tax is wider and fairer and carbon tax has the unique advantages of higher legislative effect and more flexible collection,while the development of China’s carbon tax policy is lagging behind.In this context,research on the carbon tax mechanism will help promote the low-carbon transition of Chinese economy and ultimately achieve the goal of carbon neutrality..Based on this practical problem,this article conducts an in-depth and systematic study of the characteristics,causes and carbon tax mechanisms of China’s carbon emissions from the perspective of regional level.First,both direct and total carbon emissions are estimated based on IPCC method and MRIO model,and the two perspectives are taken into comparison.Second,regional linkage analysis is adopted to identify the economic and carbon emission linkage characteristics,and two-dimensional linkage benchmarks are designed to scientifically divide China’s regions,thereby extracting several types of emission reduction regions with different linkage characteristics.Third,structural decomposition analysis is employed to identify key driving factors of regional emission,including regional trade and other factors,and then regional trade flows are discussed to further understand how regional trade structure affects China’s carbon emissions.Finally,based on the perspective of price transmission,a unified carbon tax and a differential carbon tax are designed and simulated by MRIO price model,which provides a scientific analysis of the impact of carbon tax.The main conclusions and policy recommendations are as follows:First,considering that China’s trade embodied carbon accounts for a relatively high proportion,the total carbon emission measure can help avoid“carbon leakage”.Therefore,the government should follow the perspective of total carbon emission when defining carbon emission responsibilities.Second,the zoning method based on regional linkage characteristics helps to extract different characteristics among regions.The government should identify key regions with the most emission reduction potential based on the economic and carbon emission linkage characteristics of each region.Third,the impact of inter-regional trade of intermediate products on emission reduction should not be ignored.The government should pay full attention to trade flows in key regions and guide the low-carbon transformation of regional trade structures.Fourth,there are significant differences in price impact and transmission path of the four types of regions under different carbon tax scenarios.From the aggregate perspective,the government should adopt a low tax rate scenario first to alleviate the cost impact on high-carbon emission areas,and gradually increase the tax rate level later.From the structural perspective,differential carbon tax can help guide the optimization and transformation of regional trade structure and improve the emission reduction efficiency of carbon tax.However,due to the short-term technical constraints in high-carbon emission areas,the negative effects are unavoidable.Therefore,the government should put forward supporting measures based on regional characteristics.From a practical perspective,the differentiated carbon tax can help reduce the“pollution haven”effect,but will exacerbate regional development differences.The carbon tax policy requires a balance between“pollution haven”and regional development differences.Innovations are as follows:First,the previous research on regional carbon emissions was mostly based on location factors,while this article focuses on regional production linkages to improve the relevance of zoning and emission reduction research.Second,previous studies on the decomposition of regional carbon emissions usually only focused on the impact of intra-regional factors,while ignoring the effects of changes in regional trade structure.Instead,this paper conducts a detailed study on the structural factors of regional trade,improving the accuracy of regional emission driving factors analysis.Third,the previous research on carbon tax conduct insufficient analysis on the transmission effect of carbon price among regions,while this article conducts in-depth research on the carbon tax mechanism and its price effect at the regional level,which provides an important reference for the formulation of China’s carbon tax.