Research On The Impact Of Electricity Price On Industrial Green Total Factor Productivity Of Cities

At the beginning of 2018,China clearly formulated the strategy of "electricity price reduction" to reduce the energy cost of enterprises,enhance the competitiveness of enterprises,and promote the transformation of China’s economy to a high-quality development stage.However,the hypothesis of "low electricity price trap" holds that although low electricity price provides low energy cost for enterprises,it will induce blind investment and excessive development of energy-intensive industries and hinder economic development in the long run.Industry is an important pillar sector of China’s economy,and also the main consumer of electricity in China.Therefore,in order to test whether the "low electricity price trap" really exists,this paper takes the industrial sector of 280 cities in China as the research object to explore the impact of industrial electricity price on the green development of industry.Firstly,based on industrial input-output data of 280 cities in China from 2003 to 2015,the data envelope analysis(DEA)and the directional distance function(DDF)were used to calculate the Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index(MLPI),which was used to measure the dynamic change of industry green total factor productivity(GTFP),reflecting the industrial green development in our country,and then empirical methods are used to explore the impact of industrial electricity prices on industrial green total factor productivity.The empirical results show that industrial electricity price has a significant positive impact on industrial green total factor productivity,which means that reducing industrial electricity price is not conducive to industrial green total factor productivity’s growth,and the "low electricity price trap"does exist.Additionally,there are obvious regional differences in this positive impact.The effect values of the east,central,and western regions decrease successively,with the highest in the east and the lowest in the west.Finally,this paper finds that the positive impact of electricity prices on industrial green productivity is mainly achieved by forcing companies to carry out technological innovation and improve technological levels and the adjustment effect of electricity price on industrial internal structure is limited.Based on the above facts,this article tries to make the following offers:first,increase industrial electricity price appropriately,supplemented by technological innovation subsidies;second,implement differentiated electricity price policies by regions or industries;third,promote green and sustainable development in the central and western regions;Fourth,make solid progress in building China’s industrial technology innovation system.