School of Urban Economics and Management, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Beijing, 100044, China.
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, University of Idaho, Moscow, 83843, USA.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Dec;29(60):90364-90377. doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-22010-2. Epub 2022 Jul 22.
Reducing coal overcapacity is an important strategy to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutralization in China. Determining the drivers of coal overcapacity is the first step toward this strategy. The existing literature focuses mainly on the macro determinants of coal overcapacity. Micro factors such as local officials' intervention motivation also plays a role, but has received less attention in the literature. Using data from 25 coal-producing provinces in China, we demonstrate that local officials' promotion pressure under the GDP-based promotion system significantly leads to coal overcapacity. Mediation effect analysis suggests that factor market distortion is one important channel through which local officials' promotion pressure affects overcapacity in the coal sector, and the distortion in the capital market plays a more dominant role than distortion in the labor market. To alleviate the negative effect of officials' promotion pressure on capacity utilization rate, we build a diversified promotion system incorporating environmental indicators. Results show that when the environmental pressure index accounts for at least 50% of the weights in the diversified promotion system, the negative effect of promotion pressure disappears. Our results suggest that to reduce coal overcapacity problem, policymakers may wish to weaken the GDP-based political promotion incentive by adding environmental and ecological indicators and reducing interventions on factor allocation. Results from the present paper has implications for resource-dependent countries facing similar overcapacity problems, especially in the context of the open economy and green recovery in the post-COVID-19 period.
化解煤炭过剩产能是中国实现碳达峰碳中和目标的重要举措。明确煤炭过剩产能的驱动因素是实施该战略的首要步骤。现有文献主要关注煤炭过剩产能的宏观决定因素。微观因素，如地方官员的干预动机，也起到了一定的作用，但在文献中受到的关注较少。本文利用中国 25 个煤炭主产省份的数据，证明了 GDP 导向的晋升体系下地方官员的晋升压力显著导致了煤炭过剩产能。中介效应分析表明，要素市场扭曲是地方官员晋升压力影响煤炭行业产能过剩的一个重要渠道，且资本市场扭曲的作用要大于劳动力市场扭曲。为了缓解官员晋升压力对产能利用率的负面影响，我们构建了一个包含环境指标的多元化晋升体系。结果表明，当环境压力指数在多元化晋升体系中的权重至少达到 50%时，晋升压力的负面影响就会消失。研究结果表明，为了解决煤炭过剩产能问题，政策制定者可能希望通过增加环境和生态指标，减少对要素配置的干预，来弱化基于 GDP 的政治晋升激励。本文的研究结果对面临类似过剩产能问题的资源依赖型国家具有启示意义，尤其是在后疫情时代的开放经济和绿色复苏背景下。
