Regional Competition,Environmental Regulation And Technological Innovation

More than 40 years of reform and opening up,China’s economy has achieved a qualitative and quantitative leap and made remarkable achievements.Since the new era,innovation driven high-quality economic development has become a new goal of China’s economic development,but the accompanying problems of environmental pollution and ecological damage have become more and more serious.The 14 th five year plan once again emphasizes the need to continuously improve environmental quality,continue to fight the battle of environmental pollution prevention and control,and further establish and improve the environmental governance system.As the main means of environmental governance,environmental regulation can not only effectively stack with the relevant policies of innovation driven development to promote the all-round green development of economy and society,but also promote the innovation investment of enterprises and all kinds of environmental protection investment.As the main body of environmental governance,local governments are duty bound to solve the problem of regional environmental pollution and damage.Therefore,local governments should scientifically and efficiently implement environmental regulation policies and give full play to the governance ability of environmental regulation.However,under the dual incentives of the central government’s politics and economy,regional competition mainly in the form of improving the speed and total amount of economic development often exists.In order to maximize the interests of the region,local governments will make a series of environmental policy choices to strive for competitive advantage.The impact of environmental policies on enterprises will change,and the internal and external production costs will also change,Then it has an impact on the technological innovation level of enterprises and even the whole region.Therefore,the role of environmental regulation on technological innovation and the regulatory role of local government competition on the path of environmental regulation technological innovation are the focus of this paper.Starting from the above realistic background,this paper constructs a spatial econometric model,makes an empirical study on the sample data of 30 provinces in China from 2008 to2019,investigates the specific impact of environmental regulation on technological innovation under the regulation of regional competitive pressure,and further analyzes the similarities and differences of environmental regulation on technological innovation under different levels of competitive pressure in eastern,central and Western China,The "win-win period" of environmental protection and technological innovation is achieved.This paper is divided into five parts.The basic contents are as follows:The first chapter is the introduction.Firstly,this chapter expounds the background of studying regional competition,environmental regulation and technological innovation,the theoretical and practical significance of this paper,and explains the main idea and framework of this paper.At the same time,the relevant literature is classified and summarized.Through the analysis,it is found that the existing literature has the deficiency of limited perspective to study the spillover effect of environmental regulation,or link environmental regulation with pollution level,or study the role of environmental regulation on technological innovation alone.There are few samples to study environmental regulation and technological innovation based on regional competition,and the innovation points of this paper are put forward based on the above conclusions.The second chapter is the concept and development process of regional competition and environmental regulation.Firstly,it explains and combs the core concept and development process of China’s regional competition,and finds that the main inducement of China’s local government competition is political incentive and financial incentive under the background of Chinese style fiscal decentralization system,as well as top-down competition;Secondly,it discusses the concept of environmental regulation,defines the subject and object of environmental regulation in China,as well as the types of environmental regulation tools,and summarizes the development process and characteristics of each stage of environmental regulation in China.The third chapter is the theoretical basis and mechanism of regional competition,environmental regulation and technological innovation.This chapter mainly summarizes the externality theory related to environmental regulation,Porter hypothesis,environmental Kuznets curve theory,fiscal decentralization theory and yardstick competition theory of regional competition,and discusses the action mechanism of regional competition,environmental regulation and technological innovation.Specifically,it includes the decomposition of technological innovation effect of environmental regulation and the principle that regional competition indirectly affects its technological innovation effect through environmental regulation.The fourth chapter is the empirical study of the impact of regional competition and environmental regulation on technological innovation.Using the spatial econometric model,this paper studies the impact of the level of environmental regulation on the level of technological innovation in 30 provinces of China under the pressure of regional competition from 2008 to 2019.It is found that there are spatial effects between regional environmental regulation and technological innovation,and the level of regional competition plays a negative regulatory role in the technological innovation effect of environmental regulation.Further research found that there are differences in the impact of regional competition and environmental regulation on technological innovation in the eastern,central and western regions,but on the whole,regional competition is not conducive to give full play to the role of environmental regulation in promoting technological innovation.Chapter V,conclusions and suggestions.Summarize the main research contents and results of this paper,and put forward policy suggestions on improving China’s performance appraisal system,environmental tax system and environmental regulation.