School of Economics, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, Guangzhou, 510320, China.
School of Finance, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, Guangzhou, 510320, China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2024 Feb;31(7):10016-10031. doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-22725-2. Epub 2022 Sep 2.
The low-carbon city (LCC) pilot policy is significant in tackling carbon emission reduction and environmental protection. Several studies have demonstrated that LCC policy dramatically decreases air pollution in cities for environmental preservation, while there is a shortage of research on banking development. Using city-level data from 2005 to 2018 in China, we examine the impact of the LCC pilot policy on the growth of the banking sector by using a difference-in-difference (DID) model and analyze the underlying transmission mechanism. The empirical result demonstrates that the construction of LCC significantly impedes the growth of the regional banking sector, and the conclusions above hold up to a battery of tests. First, the LCC policy drastically reduces the scale of industries in the pilot cities, including secondary industry output, tertiary industry output, fixed asset investment, and fixed asset balance. Second, the LCC policy encourages industrial reorganization in the pilot cities, as demonstrated by a change in market demand from high carbon-emitting enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises to low carbon-emitting enterprises and state-owned enterprises, respectively. The results indicate that the LCC policy produces credit risk at enterprises and conveys it to banks, resulting in a retarding effect on banking development.
低碳城市（LCC）试点政策对于减少碳排放和环境保护具有重要意义。一些研究表明，LCC 政策可显著降低城市的空气污染，从而保护环境，但关于银行业发展的研究却相对较少。本文利用中国 2005-2018 年的城市层面数据，通过使用双重差分（DID）模型，考察了 LCC 试点政策对银行业增长的影响，并分析了其潜在的传导机制。实证结果表明，LCC 的建设显著阻碍了区域银行业的发展，上述结论在一系列稳健性检验中仍然成立。首先，LCC 政策大幅降低了试点城市的产业规模，包括第二产业产出、第三产业产出、固定资产投资和固定资产余额。其次，LCC 政策鼓励了试点城市的产业重组，市场需求分别从高碳排放企业和非国有企业转向低碳排放企业和国有企业。结果表明，LCC 政策在企业层面产生信贷风险，并将其传递给银行，从而对银行业发展产生了滞后效应。
