A Study Of Institution Incentives Of Clean Technology Innovation

As the rapid development of China’s economy brought serious environmental problems, the economy must accelerate the adjustment of industrial structure and the transformation of development mode in order to achieve sustainable development. Clean production mode based on clean technology is an important way to effectively solve the conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. Because of the characteristics of path dependence in technology innovation, and the innovation behavior of firms are difficult to spontaneously from the traditional technique to clean technology in the free competition market economy, establishment of the institution system is needed to encourage to clean technology innovation. Therefore, in the dual constraints on economic growth and environmental restoration, this paper is studying the mechanism of action, the evolutionary path and biased effect of the various institutions to encourage clean technology innovation, and it can serve as a reference for the establishment of incentive institution to clean technology innovation.Firstly, through delimiting the concept of institution and clean technology, doing the related literature review and having status quo description of institution incentives and clean technology innovation, this paper determined AABH model of Acemoglu et al.(2012) as the basis of theoretical analysis and establish a general framework for the analysis of institutional incentives and clean technology innovation. The framework is based on the assumption of rational economic man and free competition market economy environment, and the firms are facing R&D path selection including the traditional technology and clean technology. Besides, the firm’s behavior process is divided into R&D and production and sales, then form the incentive firms turned to the three evolutionary paths of clean technology innovation, accordingly the incentive institution is divided into R&D subsidies and environmental governance and market demand cultivation, etc.Secondly, this paper is focus on establishing an endogenous economic growth model through introducing the related variables of institution into AABH model in the theoretical analysis, from the competitive equilibrium of decentralized decision economy and the Pareto optimal of centralized social planners. Based on the externalities of technology innovation and pollution emissions, and under the condition of efficient allocation of resources, the paper studies the thesis including incentive mechanism of all kinds of institution, boundary between institutions and exit conditions of institution and environmental restoration path, etc. On the one hand, the analysis is focus on incentives institution for the sector of product and R&D in low-carbon constraints, which study the action mechanism, the biased effects of clean technology from carbon tax and subsidies and carbon emissions trading system, as well as the influence of exhaustible resource price. On the other hand, the analysis is focus on the perspective of product market demand, including price subsidies, government purchase and funding of clean products supporting infrastructure, as well as demand preference of clean products, etc.Thirdly, this paper analyzes the institution effects to incentive clean technology innovation of new energy vehicle in the empirical analysis, mainly using estimation method of count panel data and patent application amount of China’s auto industry (2001-2013), which basically verified the effectiveness of incentive institution in China. Estimate conclusion found that the market demand to cultivate and environmental control institution have a significant incentive effect on clean technology innovation, but found no substitution effect of clean technology to dirty technology; because the data is not distinguish automotive technology subsidies category, the biased effects of clean technology innovation is not obvious on the R&D subsidies institution; and technological progress shows the significant characteristics including path dependence and knowledge spillover effect.Finally, this paper put forward to establishing institutional system to incentive clean technology innovation, mainly including the basic protection, financial support, environmental governance and public participation, etc.