Green Innovation Stimulation Effect Of Low-carbon City Pilot Policies

Low-carbon development is an important choice for the transformation and reform of the global economic development mode,and green innovation is undoubtedly the key factor to promote the transformation of low-carbon economy.Due to the positive externality of green innovation,market failure is inevitable,and the government’s environmental regulation means are indispensable.Along the environmental regulation to green innovation,low carbon development this train of thought,research emerge in endlessly,but owing to limitation of the endogenous and research perspectives,the existing research ignores the low carbon economy development for green innovation "reverse",at the same time also less in a previous study on "porter hypothesis"(green innovation effect of environmental regulation)of the strong and the weak to distinguish and verification,The resulting "Porter effect" test results are also questionable.Starting from 2010,the construction of "low carbon city" gradually carried out by different regions in China and the comprehensive environmental regulation means adopted provide a rare research scene for the solution of the above problems.Therefore,following the technical route of causal inference of environmental policy assessment,this paper takes the implementation of two batches of low-carbon city pilot policies as a quasi-natural experiment to verify the impact of low-carbon city pilot policies on green innovation from the two levels of prefecture-level city green innovation and enterprise green innovation.Specifically,on the premise of theoretical analysis of the stimulating effect of low-carbon pilot policies on green innovation,this paper proposes a hypothesis of the impact of low-carbon pilot policies on green innovation.Based on the green total factor productivity and green patent application data of 284 cities in China from 2007 to 2017,This paper systematically investigates the impact and mechanism of low-carbon pilot policies on green innovation by means of the differential model and a series of robustness test methods.The empirical analysis results show that :(1)the pilot policies of low-carbon cities effectively boost the level of urban green total factor productivity,and the effect of the second batch of pilot policies is more obvious;The first batch of pilot policies mainly improved the efficiency of green technology,while the second batch of pilot policies promoted the progress of green technology.(2)In terms of the induced effect of low-carbon city pilot policies on regional green patent application activities,the effect of the second batch of low-carbon pilot policies is more obvious;(3)The pilot policies of low-carbon cities stimulate enterprises’ green independent innovation ability,and help to improve the probability and scale of enterprises’ green independent innovation activities at the same time;(4)Low carbon city pilot policies promote green innovation through strengthening environmental regulations,improving expected economic benefits and expanding government support for science and technology.Based on the above empirical conclusions,this paper puts forward corresponding policy suggestions for the optimization of a new round of low-carbon pilot policies.This article on low-carbon urban pilot policy and regional green innovation causal relationship between the empirical results,for the test of low carbon economy transformation development for the reverse effect of green innovation and comprehensive environmental regulation method provides the research situation of green innovation effect,also for the applicability of the "porter hypothesis" in China provides new empirical evidence.Furthermore,clarifying the green innovation stimulation effect of low-carbon city pilot policies will help to explore the urbanization promotion mode in line with China’s national conditions,accelerate the green transformation of cities,and align the strategic goals of carbon peak and carbon neutral as soon as possible.