The Impact Of Environmental Regulation On The Export Of Listed Companies

Since reform and opening-up policy,China’s economy achieves leapfrog growth.After joining the WTO,international exchanges have become more frequent.Export trade has contributed a lot to the economic growth.At the same time,we can notice that as the environmental pollution situation worsens,the conflict with economic development is becoming more and more obvious.environmental protection has become one of the three major themes of today’s world and peace and development since1990 s.Countries began to pay attention to environmental protection and gradually introduced stricter environmental regulation policies.While environmental regulation policies are dealing with environmental pollution,how to influence the economy has become a topic of common concern for Chinese and foreign scholars.The issue of environmental protection and export trade is one of the important topics of research.China’s practice of environmental regulation policies is also in constant efforts.In the "Opinions of the State Council on Strengthening Environmental Protection Key Work" issued in 2011,the emerging word "ecological red line" appeared.In the following years,in order to maintain the bottom line of ecological and environmental security,the Ministry of Environmental Protection has introduced guidelines and documents with guiding significance,and established training courses for the provinces to help the provinces define the red line range suitable for their own provinces.At present,the process of delineation in 31 provinces across the country is different,There are 17 provinces including Beijing in the regular stage of policy,11 provinces such as Jiangsu are in the implementation stage of the policy,and there are also three provinces such as Guangdong in the legislative stage.This article takes the "ecological protection red line" policy that was implemented in 2012 as the analysis object of natural experiments.First of all,this paper gives an overview of China’s environmental regulation and ecological protection red line;After that,the theoretical transmission mechanism between environmental regulation policy and export trade was analyzed,Finally,using the micro data of listed companies from 2011 to 2017,using the double difference analysis method and the two-way fixed effect model,the empirical study on the impact of the implementation of environmental regulation policies on the export of listed companies in China,the regression results were tested for robustness by the tendency score matching method,the measurement index of the replacement export variable and the lag period effect.From the three levels of enterprise ownership,responsibility and regional differences,the heterogeneity of the impact of environmental regulation policies on China’s exports and the mechanism role of R&D innovation in the process of impact are analyzed.After empirical research,this study found that:(1)The “ecological protection red line” environmental regulation policy has a significant positive correlation with the export of listed companies in China.To a certain extent,it can be said that the main argument of this paper is established,that is,the red line environmental policy does not inhibit the export growth of enterprises but promotes the export of enterprises.increase.The implementation policy of environmental regulation is not simply to increase the cost of enterprises to reduce competitiveness,but to promote innovation in enterprises to make up for the cost.(2)In order to test the correctness of the empirical results,this paper adopts three kinds of robustness tests,such as propensity score matching method,replacement export measurement index and lag period effect.The empirical results obtained by the three selected test methods reflect the robustness of the main research in this paper,that is,the implementation of environmental regulation policies can promote exports.(3)The impact of the “ecological protection red line” environmental regulation policy on China’s exports does exist in the heterogeneity of ownership,responsibility and region.First,state-owned enterprises have not had a significant impact on the impact of environmental regulation policies on exports.However,the positive impact of environmental regulation policies and export trade is significant among non-state-owned enterprises.Secondly,as far as the classification of legal liability subjects is concerned,only civil liability subjects can positively influence environmental policies and export trade.Finally,when studying the heterogeneity of regional differences,it is found that the positive impact of environmental regulation policies on exports mainly exists in the eastern part of China.(4)Through the mechanism test of environmental regulation affecting exports,empirical analysis shows that the positive effect of environmental regulation policy on exports is more obvious in the group with high R&D intensity,while the role of group with low R&D intensity is not obvious.This shows that the implementation of environmental regulation policies can stimulate the innovation ability of enterprises,achieve the leap-forward development of exports,and affect the growth of exports,which is conducive to the transformation of export development model,and empirically test that the "Porter effect" can be established in China.Based on the empirical conclusions,this article proposes relevant recommendations from the perspective of government and enterprises.At the government level: improve environmental regulation methods,strengthen environmental system construction;strengthen law construction and increase penalties;actively promote international environmental and technical standards,and strive for initiative in the formulation of international standards;encourage enterprise innovation and adopt supportive subsidies.At the enterprise level: establish a trade and environmental protection concept,enhance the green strength of products;accelerate the upgrading of industrial structure,avoid the impact of environmental barriers;increase the level of scientific and technological research and development,and achieve clean and environmentally friendly production.