Environmental Decentralization,Local Government Competition And Green Total Factor Productivity

Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has achieved remarkable rapid development and the people’s quality of life has been steadily improved.However,behind the prosperity,there is a great threat to the natural environment.The local government competition mode of developing economy at the expense of the environment makes the ecological resources face a great test,and environmental protection is imminent.Therefore,how to balance the relationship between economy and ecology is an important issue to realize the green economic transformation.In fact,the Chinese government has long been concerned about the seriousness of environmental pollution,has been constantly exploring environmental protection policies in line with national conditions and perfect environmental management system,and has also achieved phased results in environmental governance.However,green economic development puts forward higher requirements for environmental quality.The government needs to constantly improve China’s environmental management system,optimize the distribution of environmental rights and responsibilities among governments at all levels,improve the efficiency of resource allocation,give full play to the information advantages of local governments in environmental governance,and realize green economic growth.Total factor productivity is an important index to measure the quality of economic development.Green total factor productivity includes environmental factors on the basis of traditional total factor productivity,which makes the index more in line with the connotation of green economy.To sum up,based on the institutional framework of China’s environmental decentralization management,this paper theoretically analyzes the action path of environmental decentralization and local government competition on green total factor productivity.The Malmquist Luenberger index is used to calculate the growth rate of green total factor productivity at the provincial and municipal levels in China,and the generalized spatial two-stage least square method(GS2SLS)is further used for empirical test.The research results are as follows:First,at the provincial level,environmental decentralization can significantly promote green total factor productivity,while local government competition shows a significant inhibitory effect.The effect of environmental decentralization on green total factor productivity in the central and western regions is more obvious than that in the eastern region.Environmental administrative decentralization and environmental supervision decentralization are conducive to the improvement of green total factor productivity,while environmental monitoring decentralization Power has not yet fully played its role.Second,at the prefecture level,environmental decentralization and local government competition also promote and inhibit green total factor productivity respectively.Compared with small cities,environmental decentralization plays a stronger role in promoting green total factor productivity in large and medium-sized cities.Third,there is interaction between environmental decentralization and local government competition.Environmental decentralization weakens the inhibitory effect of local government competition on green total factor productivity.Forth,Mechanism analysis shows that the investment attraction effect and industrial upgrading effect of environmental decentralization are conducive to the improvement of green total factor productivity,and local government competition hinders the improvement of green total factor productivity through resource allocation effect and industrial upgrading effect.Finally,according to the above empirical analysis conclusions,combined with the specific situation of China’s current environmental management system arrangement,this paper puts forward relevant policy suggestions from two aspects: promoting the rational division of central and local environmental protection rights and responsibilities and improving the incentive and restraint mechanism of local governments,so as to speed up the green transformation process of China’s economy.