Environmental Rights Trading Market,Green Ability And Carbon Outsourcing Of Chinese Enterprises

Today,when environmental problems are increasingly prominent,it becomes a major issue of the countries all over the world to be resolved that how to prevent the further deterioration of the environment on which we live by formulating reasonable and effective environmental regulations,and to explore the harmonious coexistence mode of man and nature.In the past two decades,countries around the world have gradually explored a set of policy frameworks to deal with environmental issues,and the environmental rights trading market is becoming an important innovational environmental regulation tool.Since the"Kyoto Protocol"introduced the market mechanism into the environmental policy framework for the first time and used it as a new path for environmental governance,it has systematically supplemented and improved the traditional policy framework.In this context,the environmental rights trading market has developed rapidly in countries all over the world,and has received extensive attention worldwide,and has gradually become a hot topic for many scholars.However,in related academic research,how to measure the CO₂ intensity of trading goods at a micro level has always been a research focus and difficulty.This article used a new measurement method to measure the CO₂ emission intensity corresponding to nearly 5,000 trading products and provides a new tool and method for micro-level research on the issue of carbon outsourcing across boundaries.This article takes China’s Carbon Emission Trading pilots（CET pilots）as a quasi-natural experiment,using the world’s trade data,national carbon emissions data,and China’s customs data and A-share listed company data as data support.With using the Difference-in-Difference-in-Difference method,this article explores the impact of CET pilot program on the carbon outsourcing behavior of A-share listed companies in micro-level.The empirical results of this paper confirm that the implementation of CET pilots has prompted companies to significantly increase their carbon outsourcing activities and import more products with higher CO₂emission intensity.This result was further consolidated and confirmed in a series of robustness tests.Further analysis of heterogeneity shows that,in the face of the implementation of CET pilot policy,compared with non-state-owned enterprises and non-industrial manufacturing enterprises,state-owned enterprises and industrial manufacturing enterprises are more inclined to the CO₂ emission intensity of their production activities.Higher production links are outsourced,and more"high-carbon"products with higher CO₂ emission intensity are imported.Finally,the results of the further analysis show that with the introduction of corporate green capabilities,the CET pilot policy has shown a significant inhibitory effect on corporate’s import behavior.The results indicate that those listed companies with stronger green innovation capabilities are more inclined to use green innovation ability to offset the increase in operating costs and the compression of profit margins brought about by environmental regulations.This further confirms the important role of green capabilities in corporate environmental governance.The findings of this article have strong practical and policy enlightenments.When the level of environmental governance and the intensity of environmental regulations is varies among countries,it is impractical to solve global environmental problems through the efforts of one party as companies actively choose carbon outsourcing to offset the increase in costs and the reduction in profit margins caused by environmental regulations.This article has further enriched and improved the literature on environment and trade,provided a new perspective for the study of international carbon outsourcing,and has strong theoretical and practical significance.