Research On The Fiscal Policy Tools In China’s Low-carbon Economy Development

Low-carbon economy emerged in recent years when global warming and high-carbon energy consumption posed a serious challenge for human being’s healthy living environment and sustainable development. The model of low-carbon economy advocates a reduction of carbon emission during the entire social production, including production and consumption by developing and applying low-carbon technology to vigorously bolster the development of renewable energy and control the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gas to realize zero emission and make carbon emissions per unit of GDP down to a minimum possible. The practical experience shows that fiscal policy plays an important role in addressing climate change and promoting the development of low-carbon economy. On the one hand, the intervention of fiscal policy tools is in order to solve negative externalities arising from global warming. On the other hand, the government can make full use of fiscal policy tools to support low-carbon economy by the way of fiscal capital investment, subsidies, tax incentives and government procurement.At present, the Chinese government attaches great importance to fiscal policy tools’ application in promoting low-carbon economy development. So what is the use of fiscal policy tools in promoting low-carbon economy development? What are the characteristics of fiscal policy tools’application in promoting low-carbon economy development? How to optimize the fiscal policy tools’ application in promoting low-carbon economy development? To answer these questions, first of all, combined with the background of fiscal policy tools’ application in promoting low-carbon economy development, this paper explains the definition and features of low-carbon economy as well as the basic category of fiscal policy tools, then reviews the related literature about theory of policy tools, policy tools’ research in improving low-carbon economy, fiscal policy tools’research in improving low-carbon economy both at home and abroad.Secondly, based on the existing policy tools quantitative studies, it focuses on using content analysis to analyze86policy texts on fiscal policy tools in low-carbon economy development from May,1998to August,2013issued by the central government, to construct the analytical framework mainly through identifying critical areas such as issuing date, issuing departments, fiscal policy tool types and the purpose of fiscal policy tools’ application etc., to determine the specific terms of the policy texts as one analysis unit, encode by category and make frequency statistics and quantitative analysis, to describe the distribution and the use of fiscal policy tools, the types of fiscal policy tools applied in the development of low-carbon economy, trends of policy tools application in different periods, the preferences of different government departments in choosing fiscal policy tools, the stage and the specific content that fiscal policy tools’ application concerns on.Finally, based on the quantitative research of fiscal policy tools conducted in documents on low-carbon economy development, the characteristics of fiscal policy tools’ application come out in further step including the lack of a carbon tax policy tools, focus on production stage in application, emphasis on the positive incentives. Learning from the successful fiscal policy tools’ application in promoting low-carbon economy development in developed countries, combined with the facts and conditions in China, this paper offers these suggestions on improving fiscal policy tools’ effectiveness, applying more in technological research and development from fiscal policy tools and both implementing positive incentives and negative incentives.