The Green Tax、Enconomic Growth And Inequality

Since reform and opening-up,China’s economy has grown rapidly.The goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects has been achieved by 2021.At the same time,China is still a middle-income country,by the middle of the 21 st century,there will be a big gap between China’s per capita GDP and that of moderately developed countries.Economic growth is still an important goal of China’s development.The 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed that by the middle of this century,China’s ecological environment will be fundamentally improved and the goal of building a beautiful China will be basically realized,which is far from the current situation of environmental pollution.Therefore,at present,we are faced with the dual pressure of economic slowdown and environmental protection.It is of great practical significance to study whether the green tax can realize the coordinated development of economy and environment.At the same time,unbalanced and inadequate development is still a serious problem in China.For example,there is a large gap in income distribution between different groups and insufficient ecological progress,which still falls far short of the connotation of common prosperity.It is worth noting that environmental pollution in China is unevenly distributed among regions,urban and rural areas,and groups.Environmental pollution inequality may lead to human capital inequality through health and education mechanisms,and human capital inequality will lead to wage inequality,which will worsen the problem of income distribution in China.In this realistic and theoretical context,studying the relationship between environmental governance and income inequality has important practical and theoretical significance for promoting common prosperity in high-quality development.Therefore,facing the reality that China is still a middle-income country,there is a large gap in income distribution and environmental quality has not been fundamentally improved,it requires that the environment needs to be managed in the process of development and balance.On this basis,this paper constructs the corresponding model for research and analysis.Firstly,the paper studies the impact of green tax on economic growth from capital accumulation and capital structure.Then,we examine the impact of green tax on income inequality from two aspects of human capital accumulation and human capital structure.The main chapters are as follows:First,we constructed a mechanism through which green taxation affects the accumulation of physical capital through life expectancy,which in turn affects environmental governance and economic development.Research based on neoclassical growth model shows that green taxation can achieve double dividends(environmental dividend and economic development dividend),which provides theoretical support for the green development concept of "lucidness and lucidness are gold and silver mountains".The corresponding transmission mechanism is that green tax reduces capital accumulation through negative income effect.At the same time,green taxes increase life expectancy through health effects,which in turn increases capital accumulation.Green taxation affects environmental quality and economic development by affecting capital accumulation.In addition,rising green tax rates allow the government to have more revenue and increase government spending on environmental governance,which makes it easier for the economy to generate environmental dividends.Analysis based on the endogenous growth framework shows that green taxes help to escape the "environmental poverty trap",which provides a new theoretical mechanism for explaining income disparities between countries.The numerical simulation results show that under both the neoclassical growth framework and the endogenous growth framework,there is an optimal green tax rate that can maximize per capita output and economic growth rate.On the basis of examining the mechanism by which green taxation affects economic growth through physical capital,we have further sorted out the industrial economic data from2004 to 2016.Based on the industrial structure of heavily polluting and non-heavy polluting industries,we discuss the impact of green taxation on Environmental,Economic Efficiency,and Consumer Welfare Impacts from the perspective of industry physical capital structure.A general equilibrium model including credit constraints,environmental pollution and environmental taxes is constructed to explore the impact of credit constraints and environmental taxes on high-quality economic development from the dimensions of ecological environment,economic efficiency and consumer welfare.The results of the numerical simulation reveal that reducing credit constraints and appropriately increasing environmental tax rates can achieve the triple dividend of "reducing pollution,eliminating mismatches,and increasing welfare",which promotes high-quality economic development.This conclusion answers the theoretical mechanism of ecological protection promoting high-quality economic development from the perspective of total factor productivity.Further,we constructe a two-sector model including endogenous credit constraints,environmental taxation and green credit subsidy policies.The conclusions of this model are similar to those of the benchmark model.According to the conclusion from the perspective of physical capital accumulation and structure,the policy implication is that the coordination of environmental policies and financial policies is benefit to high-quality economic development.and then achieve the goals of green growth,beautiful China and carbon commitment.Based on horizontal inequality of human capital and vertical intergenerational mobility,this paper studies how green taxation affects human capital inequality and intergenerational mobility through pollution inequality.First,we model the intergenerational transmission of pollution and build a generation overlapping model that includes the intergenerational transmission of pollution exposure inequality.Under different human capital inequality states,we study how pollution exposure inequality affects long-term human capital inequality and economic growth.It is found that when the initial human capital inequality is high and the pollution is serious,the economy is likely to fall into the inequality trap.The mechanism behind it is the "income effect" and "cognitive effect" of human capital.People with higher human capital have higher income,higher cognition level,and more investment to avoid pollution,so the level of human capital will be higher.Conversely,individuals with low human capital fall into the trap of human capital inequality.In addition,strict environmental policies widen the scope of the inequality trap and increase economic growth along an equal and balanced growth path.A combination of environmental policies and public education investments can help break out of the human capital inequality trap and promote economic growth.The above study assumes that the structure of labor force remains unchanged externally.We further relax this assumption and use Maoz and Moav(1999)for reference to internalize the change of labor force structure to study the impact of green taxation on income inequality and intergenerational mobility of education.This paper analyzes the impact of green tax rate on income inequality from a static horizontal perspective,and finds that the relationship between green tax rate and income inequality is u-shaped.This paper analyzes the impact of green tax on education mobility from the longitudinal perspective of intergenerational mobility,and finds that with the increase of green tax rate,education mobility first increases and then decreases.Further,the mechanism of the impact of green taxation on income inequality,life expectancy and medical burden of environmental diseases is discussed.Based on the above research conclusions,the policy implication is that to give full play to the spillover effects of environmental policies,the coordinated development of ecological protection and income distribution is an important practical path to promote common prosperity.