Research On The Impact Of Heterogeneous Environmental Regulations On Employment

Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has maintained a high-speed growth.During this period,the industry as an important economic growth point has developed rapidly.However,the development mode of high energy consumption and high emission inevitably brings side effects,which has caused serious damage to the ecological environment while promoting economic growth and increasing employment.Moreover,with the new normal of China’s economy,the employment pressure is great in China,the graduates of colleges and universities increase year by year,the rural population is huge,the employment structure is unbalanced and the regional imbalance are prominent.In order to improve the environment,the government has issued and implemented a series of environmental regulations,which are increasingly strict.On the one hand,environmental regulations directly affect the production decision-making of enterprises,and enterprises will choose to increase pollution control,reduce production scale or change the input of production factors,which will inevitably change the labor demand of enterprises,on the other hand,environmental regulations will affect the technological innovation of enterprises,Enterprises will choose to reduce R & D investment,increase funds for pollution control,or actively carry out technological innovation to obtain economic benefits,which also affects the labor demand of enterprises.At present,environmental protection and stable employment are two issues that the government pays attention to.In the target of the 14 th five year plan,it is clearly proposed that "the construction of ecological civilization should achieve new progress" and "achieve more full and higher quality employment".Therefore,it is necessary to study the impact of environmental regulation on employment in such a background.This paper combs the existing environmental regulation policies in China,classifies them,analyzes the influence of the order control and market incentive environmental regulations on industrial employment,and explains the internal mechanism of the regulation in detail.Based on the data of industrial panel,the paper empirically tests the influence and difference of heterogeneous environmental regulation on employment.On this basis,the intermediary effect model is established to investigate the intermediary effect of technological innovation,Finally,the following conclusions are drawn: first,the order control and market incentive environmental regulations are U-shaped curve with employment,that is,when the environmental regulation is relatively small,it can inhibit employment.When the environmental regulation crosses the turning point value,it can promote employment,and realize the "double dividend" of environmental improvement and employment growth.Although the average level of two kinds of environmental regulations in China is on the left of the inflection point,some provinces still have more intensity of environmental regulation than the inflection point,which brings about the growth of employment.Therefore,the "double dividend" can be realized in China.Secondly,this paper investigates the intermediary effect of technological innovation through the intermediary effect model.The results show that the implementation of the order control environmental regulation improves the level of technological innovation of enterprises,and then drives employment growth.On the contrary,with the enhancement of market incentive environmental regulations,it inhibits the level of technological innovation of enterprises and thus is not conducive to employment growth.