Environmental Regulation,Technological Innovation And Upgrading Of Industries

Since the reform and opening up,the economic development in China has made remarkable achievements and created the miracle of economic growth in the world.But long-term high economic growth rate relied mainly on the traditional growth pattern "high input,high consumption,high pollution,low quality,low efficiency,low output" and "first pollution,then control",which led to paying a heavy resource and environmental costs,and a series of social problems in the field of environment.Environmental problem is the hot spot and focal point in China's economic development,the win-win is the foundation of the road of sustainable development.However in the practice of market economy,environmental protection and economic development often present a dilemma situation.Economic effect of environmental regulation has been a controversial topic.Whether tighter environmental regulation could weaken industry technology innovation ability,even hinder the industrial upgrading?Does "Porter hypothesis" exist in China?The research and analysis of this problem has important theoretical and realistic significance for the transformation and upgrading of China's industrial development.This article will focus on the economic effect of environmental regulation,based on the theory of "Porter hypothesis" to verify if environmental regulation will hinder the ability of the manufacturing technology innovation,how environmental regulation will impact on industry transformation and upgrading.This paper,by using panel data of 28 manufacturing sectors during 2004-2013 in China,tests whether environmental regulation would hinder technological innovation in manufacturing from aspects of time dimension and the strength dimension.According to the empirical analysis,tightening environmental regulation would not significantly hinder China's manufacturing technology innovation ability,especially in the long term,environmental regulation can promote enterprises to increase investment in research and use the advanced green manufacturing technology,so as to improve enterprise technology innovation capacity and international competitiveness.In order to further study the effects of environmental regulation on industrial upgrading,the paper analyzed the transmission mechanism between environmental regulation and industrial upgrading,and studied how environmental regulation influences the industrial upgrading by using panel data of 30 provinces during 2004-2013 in China.The empirical results show that environmental regulation has significant positive influence on industrial upgrading,by promoting industrial technology innovation.The paper finally concludes that government can moderately increase the intensity of environmental regulation in the critical period of economic transformation,and guide industrial structure more rationalization to realize win-win situation of industrial structure upgrade and environmental protection.