Study On The Impact Of Establishment Of The Special Economic Zones On Enterprise Pollution Emission

China is facing the dual pressure of comprehensively deepening reforms and achieving sustainable development.In this context,the environmental effects of industrial agglomeration have become the focus of academic circles.The essence of the establishment of the Special Economic Zones（SEZs）is the agglomeration of industries in space.However,the current environmental effects of SEZs are rarely mentioned in the literature.The microscopic mechanism of industrial agglomeration and environmental pollution is always a“black box”.Clarifying the relationship between the two and the internal mechanism of is not only conducive to assessing the impact of establishing the SEZs on corporate pollution emissions,but also helps to provide empirical evidence for the environmental governance of SEZs,which is of great significance to the realization of the dual goals of economic growth and environmental protection in China.This paper attempts to enrich and perfect the micro research on industrial agglomeration and environmental pollution,and discusses the relationship between agglomeration and pollution from theoretical and empirical perspectives.In terms of theory,the article analyzes the relationship between industrial agglomeration and environmental pollution from the perspectives of New Economic Geography,Theory of Circular Economy and Externality,and incorporates technological innovation,centralized supervision and control of pollution into the theoretical analysis framework to expatiate the impact of industrial agglomeration on enterprise pollution emissions.In addition,in order to refine the micro research on industrial agglomeration and environmental pollution,this paper also explains the differentiated impact of heterogeneity of SEZs on enterprise pollution and environmental spillover effect on enterprises outside SEZs within a specified region,which provides a theoretical basis for the empirical analysis in the following paper.In the empirical aspect,the paper using integrated data of China industrial enterprise database and industrial enterprise pollution database from 1998 to 2007.In addition,2003-2006,the State Council and the relevant ministries and commissions cleaned up and rectified various SEZs across the country,which provided great quasi-natural experimental conditions for the study.Based on this objective fact,this paper investigates the environmental effect and the internal mechanism of establishing the SEZs by Difference-in-Differences（DID）approaches with multiple time periods and using PSM-DID for robustness testing,so as to expand the research on agglomeration and pollution to the microscopic field,and help to identify the relationship between agglomeration and pollution from the micro level,which consolidate the micro foundation for the environmental effects of agglomeration.The empirical results of the paper show that,in general,the establishment of SEZs is helpful to reduce the enterprise’s pollution emissions.Further research found that the impact of the establishment of SEZs on corporate pollution emissions is related to the heterogeneity of the SEZs level,that is,the emission reduction effect of national special economic zones is greater than that of provincial SEZs and below.In addition,from the perspective of demonstration effect of enterprise behavior and knowledge diffusion,the establishment of SEZS has environmental spillover effect on enterprises outside SEZs within a specified region.Finally,following the impact mechanism testing,technological innovation,centralized supervision and control of pollution are the important mechanisms for the SEZs to affect the enterprise’s pollution emission.Based on theoretical analysis and empirical research,the thesis puts forward suggestions on how to play the role of SEZs in energy conservation and emission reduction: further standardize the construction of development zones,increase support for technological innovation of enterprises in SEZs,and improve the environmental supervision and governance system of the Special Economic Zones.The above research and analysis provide a reference for formulating scientifically applicable policy tools.