Local Government Competition,Environmental Regulation And China’s Green Total Factor Productivity

Faced with increasingly serious environmental problems,China has formulated not only strict laws and regulations,but also incorporated green concepts into national strategies to promote high-quality economic development.However,under such strict conditions,the implementation of laws and regulations has been problematic.There has long been fierce competition among local governments for limited resources,known as "local government competition".Over the past several decades,this unique "competition" approach has,to a large extent,become an important driving force for China’s economic development.Although this competition has brought remarkable economic growth for our country,environmental problems have become even more serious because of this disorderly and extensive development model.As our country’s economy is switching from a stage of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development,it is urgent to reexamine the impact mechanism of environmental regulation to achieve green sustainable development,to ensure that local government competition under the premise of excellent economic growth mechanism,to better make use of environmental regulation,to promote high-quality sustainable economic development.To study these problems,this paper first describes the current green total factor productivity research results,and on this basis,this paper further discusses and analyzes the environmental regulation and the current situation of green total factor productivity.On this basis,this paper analyzes the action mechanism of local government competition on environmental regulation and the influence path of environmental regulation on green total factor productivity,and puts forward the hypothesis of this paper.In the empirical part,combined with the previous analysis hypothesis,this paper uses the bidirectional fixed effect model and the regulatory effect model to discuss the relationship between environmental regulation and green total factor productivity,analyzes regional differences,and further discusses the regulatory effect of local government competition.The empirical results show that:(1)Both command-based environmental regulation and market-based environmental regulation can promote the improvement of green total factor productivity.(2)Command-type environmental regulation has a significant effect on green total factor productivity in the four regions of China.(3)Market-based environmental regulation plays a significant role in promoting green total factors in eastern and northeastern China.(4)Local government fiscal competition will weaken the effect of market-based environmental regulations on green total factor productivity.(5)The investment attracting competition of local governments will strengthen the role of command-type environmental regulation in promoting green total factor productivity.Based on the above conclusions,this paper puts forward the following three policy suggestions: First,a reasonable promotion system should be established.Include environmental performance in the promotion evaluation of local government officials.In order to improve the incentive effect,different weights should be given to the performance evaluation indexes of different regional officials.Second,environmental regulation policies that operate smoothly and efficiently should be tailored to local conditions.In different regions,environmental regulation policies conforming to the local economic operation mechanism should be formulated to avoid environmental policies incompatible with local characteristics.Third,the strategic behaviors of local governments should be taken into account when formulating environmental regulation policies.The policy formulation should take into account the degree and mode of local government competition,make full use of the favorable mechanism of local government competition to environmental regulation,and reduce the weakening effect caused by local government competition.