Research On The Impact Effect And Mechanism Of Green Finance On The Low-Carbon Economic Transition

The report of the 20 th Party Congress emphasizes,"Actively and steadily promote carbon peaking and carbon neutrality",which put forward a clear direction and requirement for the lowcarbon transformation of China’s economy.As the world’s largest energy-consuming and carbonemitting country,China has shortened the time period from carbon peak to carbon neutrality by nearly half compared with developed countries,and it is a difficult task to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality while maintaining high-quality economic development.How to effectively stimulate the motivation of enterprises for low-carbon transition and improve the efficiency of carbon emission reduction are important questions that need to be solved for China’s economic low-carbon transition.Compared with traditional finance,green finance pays more attention to the combination of financial business activities with pollution control and environmental protection.Under the advantages of the socialist market economy system,China’s green financial system is characterized by an organic combination of "active government" and "effective market".On the one hand,it solves the negative externality of carbon emissions through policy regulation.On the other hand,it serves the financing needs of the real economy in low-carbon transformation through financial development.Green financial policies are characterized by the coordinated promotion of "topdown" national design and "bottom-up" local exploration,while local governments,despite their environmental information advantages,may lack incentives for environmental governance due to economic growth pressures.So,can green financial policy,with effective "up and down convergence",have the effect of high-carbon transition and low-carbon development? With the synergy of policy and market,does green finance promote the low-carbon transformation of regional economies?There are also a series of questions that remain to be answered in terms of specific mechanisms of action.Green financial policies have both punitive and incentive effects,as well as two types of contents to encourage the development of low-carbon industries and green innovation,which will have a differentiation effect among industries.As far as high-carbon enterprises are concerned,under the constraints of green financial policies,it is possible to establish the concept of long-term development,actively carry out green innovation and seek low-carbon transformation;it is also possible to reduce emissions only by cutting production due to upward pressure on costs and negative impacts on production and operation.For low-carbon enterprises,there is a natural contradiction between the "positive externality" of low-carbon development and the "profitseeking" nature of capital.Can green finance reconcile this contradiction? Can the scarce financial resources be "evenly distributed" to all types of enterprises and cities in the process of green allocation?Although research results in the field of green finance have been enriched in recent years,there are fewer theoretical and systematic analyses,and there are also few studies focusing on the function of green finance from the perspectives of the government and the market,the implementation of green finance policies from the perspective of the relationship between the central government and the local government,and the low-carbon transformation of the economy from the perspective of welfare.The conclusions of the studies on the mechanism of the impact of green finance on the low-carbon transformation of the economy are not consistent.Based on the logical idea of "theoretical mechanism — micro effect and impact mechanism — macro effect and impact mechanism test",This paper decomposes economic low-carbon transition into enterprise lowcarbon transition and regional low-carbon transition.Applying to theoretical model analysis,the green finance analysis framework that is more in line with the operation of the real economy is constructed.And a variety of econometric methods are used to carry out empirical tests based on the data of Chinese enterprises and cities,systematically answering the question of whether and how green finance affects the economic low-carbon transition,with the aim to further supplement and perfect the research in the field of green finance,and provide reliable empirical evidence and feasible policy recommendations for financial support of economic low-carbon transition.The main points contain the following aspects:Firstly,this paper defines the concepts of green finance and low-carbon transition.And on the basis of combing the research and theories in the related fields,introducing the green finance factor into the endogenous economic growth model with environmental constraints,theoretical analyzing the effect and mechanism of green finance on the low-carbon economic transition.Differing from the existing theoretical models in the field of green finance,which only use a single policy tool to portray green finance,this paper further expands the setting of the existing theoretical models in the field of green finance in terms of the content and ultimate goal of green finance,and finds that there exists a "minimum intensity" of policy regulation and "optimal proportion" of market development in green finance,and proposes a theoretical proposition and a logical framework for the empirical test in the following paper.It finds that there is a "minimum intensity" of policy regulation and an "optimal proportion" of market development in green finance,and puts forward the theoretical proposition and logical framework that green finance influences the low-carbon transformation of the economy,which provides theoretical support for the empirical test.Secondly,Starting from the micro effects of green financial policies,different from the previous researches,which focus on the perspective of green credit policies or national green financial policies,this paper distinguishes the research objects into high-carbon enterprises,lowcarbon enterprises and general types of enterprises,and examines the high-carbon transition effects and low-carbon development effects of comprehensive green financial policies from the dimensions of top-level design and local exploration,based on the two-period double-difference model and the multi-period double-difference model.The study shows that national green financial policies can promote both the transformation of high-carbon enterprises and the development of low-carbon enterprises,however,the local exploration of local green financial policies only promotes the transformation of high-carbon enterprises,while the impact on the development of low-carbon enterprises is not significant.This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests such as parallel trend hypothesis test,heterogeneity treatment effect test and placebo test.Heterogeneity analysis based on ownership and size shows that green finance policies have a significant effect on the high-carbon transition of non-state-owned enterprises compared with state-owned enterprises,and there is "scale discrimination" in the allocation of green finance resources.Subsequently,The results of further channel analysis from the perspectives of enterprise financing,investment,green innovation and internal governance show that the national green financial policy incentives low-carbon enterprise development expectations and green innovation,and reduces the scale of investment and financing and agency costs of high-carbon enterprises,but commercial credit financing creates a certain degree of substitution for the financing constraints.In contrast,the local green financial policy has a stronger penalizing effect on high-carbon financing and will not be replaced by commercial credit financing,which strengthens the transition and development expectations of high-carbon enterprises and shows the comparative advantage of the local green financial policy in forcing the transition of high-carbon enterprises.However,local green financial policies do not significantly promote green innovation by enterprises and highcarbon enterprises only carry out strategic green innovation under the constraints of national green financial policies,which shows that green financial policies have not yet reached the "minimum intensity".Furthermore,the impact effect of green finance on regional low-carbon transition is examined at the city level.The global entropy method is used to construct a city green finance development index,and a two-stage NSBM model is used to measure the economic performance and welfare performance of regional low-carbon transition,which not only improves the problem of insufficient explanatory power of the provincial data used in existing studies and enriches the indicators for measuring green finance and low-carbon transition,but also makes a useful supplement to the existing studies that focus on examining the economic effects of green finance development without analyzing the welfare level.The study finds that the green finance development index is still at a low level,although it has been rapidly improving.The economic performance of low-carbon transition is greater than the welfare performance,but the growth rate of welfare performance is faster.Based on the fixed-effects model test,it is found that green finance has a significant effect on the economic performance and welfare performance of regional low-carbon transition,and this conclusion still holds after a series of endogenous discussions and robustness tests,such as instrumental variables method,changing estimation methods,changing the explanatory variables and core explanatory variables.Finally,The results of heterogeneity analysis from the perspectives of regional location,city level,resource endowment and marketization degree of cities show that,in western regions and resource cities,the dependence of economic growth on high-carbon industries produces carbon locking effect and "resource curse",which is not conducive to the positive effect of green finance on the low-carbon economic transition.In order to play the welfare transformation effect of carbon emission reduction,the development of green finance needs to rely on more resources and a good market environment.The analysis results of the role of the three perspectives of energy saving and pollution reduction,green innovation and industrial structure show that the development of green finance reduces energy intensity and plays a synergistic role in pollution reduction and carbon reduction,improving "quality and quantity" on green innovation and promoting the rationalization and advancement of industrial structure.The green finance development has not yet reached the "optimal ratio".In addition,considering the obvious spatial differences between green financial development and urban low-carbon transformation,the spatial spillover effect of green financial development is further examined based on the spatial Durbin model.It is found that due to the pollution diversion and siphoning effect,green financial development has a negative spatial spillover effect on urban low-carbon transformation,which is not conducive to the improvement of the economic performance of low-carbon transformation in neighboring cities.To summarize,this paper expands the existing literature in terms of research perspectives,contents,methods and indicators.The conclusions will not only provide policy references for the smooth transmission mechanism of green financial policies,but also provide theoretical and empirical support for promoting the development of green financial markets and the low-carbon transformation of the real economy.