The Effect Of Environmental Regulations On The International Competitiveness Of Manufacturing Industries In Zhejiang Province

Economically, the effects environmental regulations on industrial competitiveness is derived from the relationship between economic growth and environment, and the logical start-point is the environmental externality and imperfecting market structure. From the very beginning of Modern Manufacturing Industry, the small economic scale covers the scarcity of environmental factor, which EC hasn't caused the conflict of manufacturing activity and environment. Since the World WarⅡ, Modern Manufacturing Industry and the trend of Economic Globalization has expanded, the large scale of human activities has raised the conflict led by the environment. Under this background, researchers have raised big interest on environment and industrial competitiveness.At present there are two opposite viewpoints among the academe, conservatives tend to think that ER will weaken the industrial competitiveness of developing countries, while radicalisms think there is an opposite effect. Objectively, most of literatures illustrate this issue on the perspective of a nation and little on the point of a region. Zhejiang is an important base of manufacturing industry and it becomes an indispensable source of national economy. Now the baffle our government and enterprises are facing is whether the level of environmental regulations weaken the industrial competitiveness in Zhejiang province? This article discusses how environmental regulations affect the industrial competitiveness theoretically, and then carries the empirical analysis on them.There are five chapters:chapter 1 gives a brief map of researching background. In Chapter 2, article gives a retrospect of some hypnosis and analysis on how environmental regulation affects competitiveness from cost and innovation. Chapter 3 is a brief introduction of the actuality of competitiveness and environmental regulation. Chapter 4 is an empirical analysis, using the index of industrial waste water, sulfur dioxide and some other ones. The conclusion in this article indicates that the competitiveness of manufacturing industries increases as its environmental regulation tighten in the long run, but in the short run the effects are indistinctive, and it varies in different industries. The last part is some suggestions based on the empirical tests.