Economics and Management School, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Feb 1;18(3):1316. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18031316.
The impact of environmental regulation has been an important topic. Based on the Chinese Custom Database and China City Statistical Yearbook, this paper investigates the effect of environmental regulation on export values and explores potential mechanisms and heterogeneous effects. Taking advantage of China's first comprehensive air pollution prevention and control plan, the Air Pollution Control in Key Zones policy, as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ the difference-in-differences method to examine the causal relationship between environmental regulation and exports. We find the statistically significant and negative effect of environmental regulation on exports at the city level. Moreover, we find that the potential mechanism is the change in export values caused by firm entry and exit, especially by exiters, rather than the change in the number of exporting firms in the city caused by firm entry and exit. In addition, we find the heterogeneous effects of environmental regulation based on the differences of environmental policy across cities and the Broad Economic Categories classification.
环境规制的影响一直是一个重要的议题。本文基于中国海关数据库和中国城市统计年鉴，考察了环境规制对出口值的影响，并探讨了潜在的机制和异质性效应。利用中国首个全面的空气污染防治计划——重点区域大气污染防治行动计划（Air Pollution Control in Key Zones policy），作为一项准自然实验，我们采用双重差分法（Difference-in-Differences method）检验了环境规制与出口之间的因果关系。我们发现，环境规制对城市层面的出口具有统计上显著的负向影响。此外，我们发现，潜在的机制是企业进入和退出导致的出口值的变化，特别是退出企业导致的出口值的变化，而不是企业进入和退出导致的城市出口企业数量的变化。此外，我们还发现了环境规制的异质性效应，这些效应基于城市之间的环境政策差异和大经济类别分类。
