The Impact Of Environmental Regulation On The Transfer Of Pollution-intensive Industry

Since the reform and opening up,China has achieved sustained and rapid economic growth,but also brought a serious ecological and environmental problems.Under the background of China's New Normal and structural reform of the supply front,it is a major policy promoted in China to strengthen environmental regulation in order to release the restriction of the environmental problem to the economic and social development.Strengthening environmental regulation certainly will increase the production and operation cost of an enterprise,influence its location choice,which will eventually have an effect on the regional transfer of industry.Therefore,the study of the impact of environmental regulation on the industrial transfer can help us get a deeper insight into the formation mechanism of industry transfer.It is of great significance to realize the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure and the sustainable development of economy and society.Based on the literature review of environmental regulation and pollution-intensive industry transfer,this dissertation divides environmental regulation into formal environmental regulation and informal regulation,and analyzes the theoretical basis and mechanism of environmental regulation affecting the transfer of pollution-intensive industry.Then the current situations of China's environmental regulation and pollution-intensive industry transfer are analyzed.In the meanwhile,by using the panel data of 31 provinces in 2003-2014,this dissertation conducts an empirical study with a threshold regression model,exploring the threshold characteristics and the spatial heterogeneity of the influence of environmental regulation on industrial transfer.In the end,some relative policy recommendations are put forward according to our research results.The empirical analysis shows that regional difference of environment regulation has become an important factor of promoting the inter-regional transfer of the pollution-intensive industry.Formal environmental regulation plays a positive role in promoting the transfer of pollution-intensive industry among regions.A rise in the intensity of formal environmental regulation will increase the cost of an enterprise.When the cost caused by the strength of environmental regulation is higher than the cost of enterprise migration,the enterprise will chose to immigrate to regions with weak environmental regulation,so as to avoid the environmental cost.The informal environmental regulation contributes to the transfer of pollution-intensive industry as a whole.Like the damage to the image,the declining of reputation and the cost of bargaining and negotiation,the informal environmental regulation can also be viewed as a kind of implicit cost.As a consequence,companies prefer to move from regions with strict informal environmental regulations to where the regulation is weak.In addition,based on the political and economic reality of China,this dissertation explores the structural change of formal environmental regulation on the transfer of polluting industry by using a panel threshold model.The empirical results show that the impact of formal environmental regulation on the transfer of polluting industry is not invariably continue,it will change with the process on the implementation of the regulation.At the initial stage of implementing,the promoting effect of formal environmental regulation on the transfer of polluting industry is greater.After a certain stage,the marginal promoting effect becomes smaller with market restructuring of local polluting industry and advancing of enterprise technical innovation.The final results may be the upgrading of local polluting industry and the progress of production technology.