| Environmental pollution is the problem that any modern-economy in the world will inevitably face during its development.China’s high-speed industrialization and modernization has brought about serious pollution.In recent years,the government have attempted to improve the environment by guiding enterprises to enhance technical strength and transform the mode of production.However,the economic data have shown that does not necessarily improve the quality of the environment,even has deteriorated the environment in many industries.Furthermore,the continuous environmental deterioration in turn would give feedbacks to the society——environmental regulations would impact enterprises’ decision-making and ultimately influence their technical choices.It can be found that there is a complex interaction between technical change and environment.Also the above factors can be observed to have significant spatial correlations.This dissertation attempts to describe the spatial interaction system,and provide constructive suggestions for the current technical change and environmental governance in China with the relevant theoretical models and econometric tools.First in the dissertation,the mathematical model of the interaction between technical change and environment is constructed by using the theory of directed technical change proposed by Acemoglu et al.after systematic literature review.According to the logical framework of the model,the empirical plans have been prepared for the following studies.Then,the dissertation has collected a few of indicators to measure industrial pollution emission and industrial green total factor productivity(GTFP).After that,the data of 31 provinces in China from 1998 to 2015 are used to estimate the nonlinear causality between technical change and pollution emission by spatial panel model SAR.And then the CES production function of general industry sectors(except the electric sector)has been specified.By using seemingly unrelated regression model(SUR)industrial data of 30 provinces(except Tibet)from 1998 to 2014 have been estimated for the parameters.Correspondingly,the CES production function and the parameters of the electric sector are specified.Non-linear regression model is used to estimate the data of 30 provinces in China from 1998 to 2014.In the end,we use spatial estimates and threshold regression methods to examine the robustness of “Porter Hypothesis” on China’s industrial data.The conclusions are:(1)the pollution and technical change both have significant spatial correlations in sample time: the pollution index is characterized as “heavy in east and north,light in west and south”,and GTFP is characterized as “strong in east and south,weak in west and north”;(2)the impact of R&D investment on the environment is inverted U-shaped,which means the increase of R&D investment in China at present has deteriorated the environment,however may have an inflection point with the increase of investment;(3)the general industrial sectors in China now experience the pattern of labor-enhanced and fossil-enhanced technical change;(4)the elasticity of substitution between clean energy and fossil energy in the electric sector is relatively high,the proportion of China’s thermal power is still huge,the electric sector’s TFP has an annual growth rate of 4.7%,which should be carefully guided;(5)the green technical change rate is increasing in the past years and has a significant spatial correlation,environmental regulations’ impact on technical change can be drawn an invertedn shape,but there are no observations near the first inflection point,although the regulations retrain technical change,and the negative effect is decreasing as the regulation is been strengthened,which implies that “Porter Hypothesis” can direct the development of China’s green industry.The dissertation then has given several suggestions:(1)the economics should rationally use technology positive spillover externalities,reduce regional exchange costs,and promote cross-regional spillovers;(2)the economics should establish a strong overall concept and strengthen regional cooperation to control pollution emissions;(3)with the help of marketadjusted control measures,the development of clean energy technologies will be actively and appropriately promoted;(4)the economics should actively optimize energy structure for different industrial sectors and regions;(5)maybe the government should appropriately increase the intensity of environmental regulation to promote the transformation of the production mode of industrial enterprises;(6)we should confirm a profound understanding of systematic relationship among the economic,society and ecosystem.The contributions of the dissertation are:(1)based on the theory of biased technical change,a systematic theoretical framework has been conducted on the relationship between technical change and environment,and the elasticity of substitution and the strength of technical change of the general industrial sectors and the power sector have been respectively estimated;(2)the nonlinear impact of environmental regulation on China’s provincial industry technical change has been studied carefully,and some robust evidences have been provided for the applicability of the “Porter Hypothesis” in China;(3)technical change and environment is been integrated into one research framework based on theory of ecological economics to systematically understand their interactions.In future studies,the author will focus on building a mathematical model that can interpret the actual impact of environmental regulation on technical change,complete the overall theoretical framework,and design more accurate estimated models and methods for the electric sector by all means. |
