School of Economics and Trade, Guangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanning, China.
School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University, Changsha, China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2020 Sep;27(25):31969-31982. doi: 10.1007/s11356-020-09072-w. Epub 2020 Jun 6.
Exploring fiscal reform's pollution effect draws increasing attention. Our paper brings a new perspective, i.e., the vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI) perspective, to study such issue. With the panel data of China's provincial level from 1999 to 2016, we reveal whether and how VFI affects environmental pollution. We find that VFI significantly enhances the environmental pollution level of China. As the VFI increases, environmental pollution effect caused by VFI appears to be aggravated. According to the transmission path check, we confirm in our paper that VFI can indirectly lead to environmental degradation by affecting the two channels environmental regulation and industrial transformation. Further, through the sub-sample regressions, we find that the impacts of VFI on environmental pollution as well as the transmission paths are regionally heterogeneous. Finally, we believe that using the VFI as a variable to explore fiscal reform's effect on environment is of rationality, and for a better environmental quality, VFI should be avoided.
探讨财政改革的污染效应引起了越来越多的关注。本文从纵向财政失衡（VFI）的角度研究了这一问题。利用 1999 年至 2016 年中国省级面板数据，我们揭示了 VFI 是否以及如何影响环境污染。研究结果表明，VFI 显著加剧了中国的环境污染水平。随着 VFI 的增加，VFI 造成的环境污染效应似乎在加剧。通过传递路径检验，我们在文中确认 VFI 可以通过影响环境规制和产业转型这两个渠道间接导致环境恶化。此外，通过子样本回归，我们发现 VFI 对环境污染的影响以及传递路径在区域上存在异质性。最后，我们认为，将 VFI 作为一个变量来探索财政改革对环境的影响是合理的，为了更好的环境质量，应避免 VFI。
