Spatial Spillover Effects Of Environmental Taxes On Green Innovation

Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has made a leap in quality and quantity,and remarkable achievements have been made.Economic development has changed from high speed to high quality,but pollution prevention and control is an important threshold that needs to be crossed,environmental problems are becoming increasingly serious under extensive economic development,and green and low-carbon transformation is an inevitable choice for China’s economic and social development in the face of severe resource and environmental constraints.The 14 th Five-Year Plan of the Communist Party of China proposes to establish and improve the environmental governance system and implement tax policies conducive to energy conservation,environmental protection and comprehensive utilization of resources.As an important tool for environmental regulation,environmental taxes have high hopes in reducing pollution emissions and promoting green innovation.In fact,the differentiated environmental tax policies currently implemented in various regions provide space for polluting enterprises to avoid environmental costs through crossregional transfers.Companies facing increasingly stringent environmental taxes in the region can not only reduce environmental costs through green technology innovation,but also avoid tax costs by relocation.The former can directly increase the level of green innovation in the region,but the latter does not achieve the original design of environmental taxes.That is,in theory,the impact of environmental taxes on green innovation has a spatial spillover effect.Obviously,this spatial spillover effect makes it more difficult for interregional environmental taxes to incentivize green technology innovation.Not only that,the intensity of local government environmental supervision will also affect the green innovation effect of environmental taxes,and ignoring government environmental supervision factors may make inappropriate inferences about the relationship between pollution reduction policies and technological innovation.Based on the above background,this paper first lists domestic and foreign literature on environmental regulation,environmental tax and corporate green innovation,and deeply explores the internal driving force of enterprise innovation.Secondly,the development process and relevant theoretical foundations of environmental supervision and environmental protection tax are sorted out,a theoretical analysis framework of environmental regulation,environmental tax and regional green innovation is established,and the spatial panel Doberman model is used to empirically analyze the spatial spillover effect of environmental tax on green innovation and the regulating effect of government environmental supervision by using the interprovincial panel data from 2005 to 2020,and further investigate the impact mechanism of environmental tax on green innovation in neighboring areas.The results show that the "local-neighbor" green innovation effect of environmental tax shows the inverted "U" characteristics,and the government’s environmental supervision further enhances the impact of environmental tax on green innovation by increasing the innovation compensation effect of environmental tax and reducing the probability of environmental regulation capture by government officials.The regional heterogeneity of the green innovation effect of environmental tax is obvious,and the nonlinear characteristics of green innovation of local environmental tax and the regulating effect of environmental supervision are only applicable to the eastern region.In the neighboring land effect,the government’s environmental supervision and regulation role is only significant in the central region,and the green innovation effect of environmental tax is significantly enhanced.The cross-regional flow of human capital and the cross-regional transfer of polluting industries are important factors that contribute to the spatial characteristics of the "local-neighbor" green innovation effect of environmental tax.High-tax environmental tax areas lead to the outflow of human capital and the return of polluting industries,which has a two-way "push and pull" effect on green innovation in neighboring areas,promoting green innovation in neighboring areas in the short term,but in the long run,the agglomeration of polluting industries,the loss of high-quality talents and the continuous deterioration of the environment will eventually inhibit green innovation in neighboring areas.Combined with the conclusion of this paper,the following four enlightenments can be obtained and put forward policy suggestions to improve China’s environmental supervision system and improve the environmental tax system.In order to enhance the effect of environmental tax policies,local governments should prudently formulate environmental tax rates,improve environmental supervision systems,further optimize talent development mechanisms,and improve regional industry coordinated development mechanisms.