Research On The Green Effect Of China’s Environmental Finance

As China’s economy enters the "new normal",the constraints of the environment and resources on development have become increasingly prominent.China’s economy has shifted from high-speed growth to high-quality development.The essence of ecological environmental protection is to coordinate the relationship between environment and economy,rather than in isolation to reduce pollution,beautify the environment.The entry point to resolve the contradiction between environmental governance and economic development is to adopt an innovation-oriented economic development path.Therefore,this article defines the green effect in terms of environment and innovation.Due to the "externality" nature of environmental pollution,there is a phenomenon of inconsistency between social costs and private costs,social benefits and private benefits.These phenomena lead to environmental problems that cannot be solved solely by the market,and the government must participate in solving environmental problems.From the perspective of policy tools,environmental finance is an important lever for the government to influence the behavior of stakeholders in the ecological environment.The environmental tax system is an important part of the toolbox used by the Chinese government to control environmental pollution through fiscal means.Therefore,from the perspective of governance tools,this article takes the environmental protection tax as an entry point to study the green effects of environmental fiscal tools.From the perspective of the environmental governance system,China’s environmental management agencies are established on the basis of China’s multi-level government system.Therefore,the implementation of environmental policies requires a reasonable division of power among environmental management agencies at all levels.This article takes vertical environmental decentralization as an entry point and continues to study the green effects of China’s environmental management system Finally,this article further studies the impact of the vertical environmental decentralization system on the policy enforcement of environmental fiscal policy tools(environmental protection tax)This paper has important theoretical and practical significance for the continued improvement of China’s environmental protection tax system and environmental management system reform.The conclusion of this paper is as follows:First,there is heterogeneity in the impact of environmental protection taxes on corresponding pollutants.Increasing the environmental protection tax rate of sulfur dioxide,nitrogen oxides and ammonia nitrogen is conducive to reducing the emission level of the corresponding pollutants,but increasing the environmental protection tax rate of chemical oxygen demand has a reverse "negative incentive" for industrial chemical oxygen demand emissions;Secondly,raising a tax burden on environmental protection of pollutants will have spillover effect,and this spillover effect is heterogeneous among different pollutants.Specifically: Within air pollutants and water pollutants,raising the standard for collecting sewage charges often produces a "synergy reduction effect".Between air pollutants and water pollutants,the spillover effects of environmental protection tax policies appear diversified.The increase of water pollutant discharge fee collection standards may reduce air pollutant emissions;while the increase of air pollutant discharge fee standards will often aggravate the discharge of water pollutants.Third,to achieve the environmental protection tax policy objectives,it is necessary to support the corresponding command-controlled environmental policy tools to ensure that local governments strictly implement environmental protection tax policies.Fourth,the innovation effect of environmental tax is heterogeneous between the air environmental tax and the water environmental tax.Specifically,increasing the tax burden of the air pollutant environmental protection tax has a negative impact on the level of regional innovation.However,increasing the environmental protection tax burden of water pollutants has a positive impact on the level of regional innovation.Fifth,the central and local environmental decentralization is conducive to reducing environmental pollution,but it has a negative effect on the level of regional innovation.The environment decentralization within the local government harms the environmental quality and regional innovation.For specific levels of environmental management agencies within local governments,provincial-level environmental management agencies undertake more environmental affairs,which is conducive to improving the regional environment quality and regional innovation;Municipal-level environmental management agencies undertake more environmental affairs,which is conducive to reducing environmental pollution emissions,but its impact on regional innovation is not significant.County-level environmental management agencies undertake more environmental affairs,which is not conducive to the reduction of regional environmental pollution and the improvement of the level of innovation.As for the specific decentralization of environmental affairs,we found that the central and local administrative environmental decentralization has negative impact on regional environmental pollution and innovation.Although provincial-level environmental administrative decentralization can promote regional innovation,its impact on regional environmental quality improvement is not significant.Municipal-level environmental administrative decentralization can achieve a win-win situation for environmental protection and innovation,however,the impact of municipal environmental administrative decentralization on the regional innovation is less than that provincial environmental administrative decentralization;County-level environmental administrative decentralization has a negative impact on regional environmental quality and innovation.For environmental monitoring,this paper finds that the central and local environmental decentralization can simultaneously improve the environmental quality and regional innovation.Provincial environmental monitoring decentralization is significantly positively correlated with the level of regional innovation,but its correlation coefficient with regional environmental pollution is not significant.Although municipal environmental monitoring decentralization promotes the regional environmental quality,but it cannot improve regional innovation.County-level environmental management agencies undertake more monitoring affairs,which is not conducive to the improvement of environmental quality and innovation.From the perspective of environmental monitoring,we can find that the central decentralization of environmental monitoring has a significant positive impact on the level of regional innovation,but its impact on the regional environmental quality is significantly negative.Provincial environmental supervision decentralization can achieve a "win-win" of environmental quality and regional innovation level,the municipal environmental supervision decentralization can reduce the level of regional environmental pollution,however its effect is not as great as provincial environmental supervision decentralization.For innovation,the coefficient of municipal environmental supervision decentralization is significantly negative.Finally,the county-level environmental supervision decentralization has a negative impact on the reduction of regional environmental pollution and the improvement of innovation levels.Sixth,we find that environmental decentralization within local governments is conducive to increasing the intensity of regional environmental tax billing,but the impact on the intensity of environmental tax collection is not significant.For specific levels of environmental decentralization,provincial-level environmental decentralization is not conducive to the increase in the intensity of environmental tax collection,but it has no significant impact on the intensity of environmental tax billing.City-level environmental decentralization significantly reduces the intensity of environmental tax billing,but has no significant impact on the intensity of environmental tax collection;county-level environmental decentralization has a significant positive impact on the intensity of environmental tax billing,but the coefficient with the intensity of environmental tax collection is not significant.For specific decentralization of environmental affairs,we found that the decentralization of environmental administration within local governments significantly promotes the billing and collection of environmental taxes.The decentralization of environmental monitoring within local governments has an adverse effect on the intensity of billing for environmental taxes,but the coefficient on the intensity of environmental tax collection is not significant;the coefficients of decentralization of environmental supervision within local governments and the billing and collection intensity of environmental tax are not significant.For the decentralization of environmental affairs at all levels,Provincial environmental management agencies undertake more environmental administrative affairs,which is not conducive to the improvement of environmental tax billing.Provincial environmental supervision decentralization weakens the billing and collection of regional environmental taxes policy.Provincial environmental management agencies undertake more environmental monitoring affairs,which will increase the billing strength of environmental taxes,but weakens the collection of regional environmental taxes.For municipal environmental management agencies,municipal environmental administrative decentralization has a significant negative impact on the strength of environmental tax billing and collection.Municipal environmental supervision decentralization negatively affects the intensity of billing for environmental taxes,but it has a significant positive impact on the intensity of environmental tax collection.Municipal environmental management agencies undertake more environmental monitoring affairs,which has a significant role in promoting the billing and collection of environmental taxes.For county-level environmental management agencies,its commitment to more environmental administrative affairs have a significant role in promoting the billing and collection of regional environmental tax policies.County-level environmental supervision decentralization has no significant impact on the enforcement of environmental taxes.The county-level environmental management agency undertakes more environmental monitoring affairs has no significant impact on the intensity of environmental tax billing,but it has a negative impact on the regional environmental tax collection.The innovation of this article is:First,this article systematically examines the impact of China’s environmental tax on regional environment and innovation from the perspective of changes in the standard of sewage charges.This not only avoids the endogenous problems caused by the use of total sewage charges to measure the China’s environmental tax policy,but also allows us to examine the policy effect of environmental tax from the level of urban and various pollutant environmental taxes.On this basis,this article studies the effects of China’s environmental tax policy on environmental pollution and innovation by calculating the policy impact of the pollutant discharge fee collection standards.Secondly,by combing China’s current environmental management system,this paper points out that China’s environmental decentralization not only includes the distribution of environmental affairs and power between the central and local environmental management agencies,but also includes the division of environmental management affairs and power between various levels of government within the local governments.Then,we use the data of personnel distribution of environmental management agencies at all levels to build China’s vertical environmental decentralization index system.On this basis,this paper uses the spatial panel model to study the environmental and innovation effects of China’s vertical environmental decentralization.Finally,by sorting out the collection process of China’s sewage charges,this article divides the implementation of China’s environmental tax(emission fee)into two dimensions: the intensity of environmental tax billing and the intensity of environmental tax collection.We conducted an empirical study on the impact of vertical environmental decentralization within Chinese local governments on the enforcement of environmental taxes.Enriched the content of relevant environmental policy implementation research.