School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University, Changsha, PR China.
Economics, Business School, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.
J Environ Manage. 2021 Mar 1;281:111883. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111883. Epub 2021 Jan 18.
Chinese government adopted a new environmental program during "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" period. Whether this program can achieve its goal of pollution reduction and quality improvement for exports is of vital importance for China's sustainable development. This paper constructs a quasi-difference-in-difference (DID) framework to identify the effects of the new environmental policy on export product quality by using highly disaggregated trade transaction data at the product level. Empirical results show that the implementation of pollution reduction targets is negatively correlated with export product quality. This negative impact is more profound in western regions, capital-intensive industries, privately owned firms and firms exporting to countries which are not members of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development group. In addition, our extended analysis shows that the negative effects can be mitigated through product switching within the firms. The major policy implication is that local governments should take proper measures to strengthen the effects of innovation offsets caused by environmental regulation and effectively utilize the induced effects of environmental regulation on product switching. The goal is to achieve a win-win outcome for environmental protection and improvement in export product quality.
中国政府在“十一五”期间采取了一项新的环境计划。该计划能否实现减少污染和提高出口产品质量的目标，对中国的可持续发展至关重要。本文通过使用高度细化的产品层面贸易交易数据，构建了一个拟差分（DID）框架，以确定新环境政策对出口产品质量的影响。实证结果表明，减排目标的实施与出口产品质量呈负相关。这种负面影响在西部地区、资本密集型产业、私营企业以及向非经济合作与发展组织成员国出口的企业中更为深刻。此外，我们的扩展分析表明，企业内部的产品转换可以减轻这种负面影响。主要的政策含义是，地方政府应采取适当措施，加强环境规制引起的创新补偿效应，并有效利用环境规制对产品转换的诱发效应。目标是实现环境保护和提高出口产品质量的双赢局面。
