Employment Effect Of Environmental Regulation

The ecological environment has been seriously broken under the extensive economic development model,which has brought the rapid development of Chinese economics,since Chna's reform and opening up in 1978.Faced with increasingly serious environmental problems,the Chinese government has gradually strengthened the intensity of environmental regulation,which has not only improved environmental quality,but also influenced the social employment.By reviewing existing literature,three perspectives on the impact of environmental regulation on employment have been found: the first one is that environmental regulation has a negative effect on employment,and the second point of view indicates that the more intensive the environmental regulation is,the more employment the society can absorb.The last view is that the relationship between environmental regulation and employment is uncertain.How to achieve a win-win situation between “environmental optimization” and “full employment” has gradually become a key concern of the government when formulating policies,and in academic circles.Based on the literature review,the effects of environmental regulation on employment have been classified into two categories,which are employment creation effect and employment loss effect,by carding conduction mechanism.And the total utility depends on the net value after the two are added.Then through the derivation of the theoretical model,the conclusion is found that U-shaped relationship is presented between environmental regulation and employment,which means that there will be a reduction in the demand for labor with the implementation of environmental regulation policies,but when it reaches a certain level,the strengthening of environmental regulation policies will attract the increase of the labor force of enterprises and promote the growth of employment.The description of environmental pollution and employment status provides the typical facts for empirical analysis.In the empirical analysis,the sample of 287 prefecture-level cities in China from 1994 to 2009 was used to estimate the impact of the “two-control area” policy on employment.The results show from two aspects.Firstly from the perspective of a full sample city,the “two-control zone” policy implemented in China is generally not conducive to the improvement of the total employment level of the city,and the negative impact on the employment level of the second industry is mainly from the SO2 control zone.The negative impact of the tertiary industry's employment level mainly comes from the acid rain control zone;the implementation of the “two-control zone” policy has a positive impact on the urban worker average wage,which mainly comes from the acid rain control zone.Secondly from the perspective of urban scale,most of the negative effects of employment in the “two-control zone” policy come from large cities;policies have shifted the labor force in large cities to small cities,resulting in a significant increase in employment in the primary and tertiary industries in small cities;employment impact in medium-sized cities.The most insignificant;policies have led to higher levels of wages for workers in large cities,while wages for employees in small and medium-sized cities have fallen.Finally,this paper puts forward some feasible suggestions from three aspects: the optimization of environmental regulatory tools selection,the industrial technological innovation of enterprises and the training of high-skilled personnel.