Research On The Impact Of Environmental Protection Tax On Regional Green Total Factor Productivity

The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed that total factor productivity is the core driving force for high quality development.The connotation of green total factor productivity is to reduce pollution and achieve green development while improving the efficiency of labor and capital factors.As an important tool for the government to use tax means to adjust the behavior of stakeholders affecting the ecological environment,studying the environmental and economic effects of environmental taxes has important theoretical value for promoting the improvement of China’s environmental fiscal system.With the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People’s Republic of China since January 1,2018,it is also of great practical significance to evaluate China’s current environmental protection tax policy from the perspective of improving green total factor productivity.Based on panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2004 to 2020,this thesis first calculates the green total factor productivity of each province and city,then designs a quasi-natural experiment with China’s environmental protection tax reform as background.Through double difference model(DID),we evaluate impact effect on regional green total factor productivity by implementing environmental protection tax policy,and analyze impact mechanism among them,verifying hypothesis put forward in this thesis.The research results show that:(1)Environmental protection tax policy can significantly boost regional green total factor productivity improvement,its pulling effect is higher than that of sewage charge policy,and there are various robustness test results supporting conclusion;(2)Mechanism analysis results verify that environmental protection tax promotes growth by driving green technological innovation,industrial structure transformation and upgrading,energy structure cleaning effect etc.Finally,this thesis puts forward policy suggestions from three aspects:(1)Improve the elements of the tax system and promote the greening of the tax system;(2)Improve the collection and management mechanism and strengthen cooperation in collection and management;(3)Guide green innovation and promote industrial upgrading.