The impact of carbon emission trading schemes on urban-rural income inequality in China: A multi-period difference-in-differences method

Energy Policy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 159 ◽  
pp. 112652
Author(s):  
Fan Yu ◽  
De Xiao ◽  
Meng-Shiuh Chang
Author(s):  
Qiong Wu ◽  
Kanittha Tambunlertchai ◽  
Pongsa Pornchaiwiseskul

The global warming has become a serious issue in the world since the 1980s. The targets for the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol cover emissions of the six main greenhouse gasses (GHGs). China is the world's largest CO2 emitter and coal consumer and was responsible for 27.3 percent of the global total CO2 emission and 50.6 percent of the global total coal consumption in 2016 (BP, 2017). As China plays an important role in the global climate change, China has set goals to improve its environmental efficiency and performance. In 2011, the Chinese government for the first time announced an intent to establish carbon emission trading market in China. Eight regional emission trading schemes have been operating since 2013 (seven pilot markets during the 12th Five Year Plan period and one pilot market during the 13th Five Year Plan period) including provinces of Guangdong, Hubei, and Fujian, and cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Chongqing. The goal of these regional emission trading pilot markets is to help the government establish an efficient carbon emission trading scheme at national level. Some researchers have been focused on examining the impact of emission trading schemes in China using CGE model by constructing different scenarios and ex-ante analysis using data prior to emission trading pilot markets implementation. While this paper tries to conduct an ex-post analysis with data of 2005-2017 to evaluate the impact of emission trading pilot markets in China at provincial level using difference-in-difference (DID) model. By including both CO2 and SO2 as undesirable outputs to calculate Malmquist-Luenberger (ML) Index to measure green total factor productivity, this paper plans to evaluate the impact of carbon emission trading pilot markets in China via emission reduction, regional green development, synergy effect and influencing channels. This paper tries to answer the following research questions: (1) Do emission trading pilot markets reduce CO2 emission and increase regional green total factor productivity? (2) Is there any synergy effect from emission trading pilot markets? (3) What are the influencing channels of emission trading pilot markets? Keywords: Emission trading, CO2 emissions, Different-in-difference


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiping Wang ◽  
Sujing Wang

Abstract As an effective tool of carbon emission reduction, emission trading has been widely used in many countries. Since 2013, China implemented carbon emission trading in seven provinces and cities, with iron and steel industry included in the first batch of pilot industries. This study attempts to explore the policy effect of emission trading on iron and steel industry in order to provide data and theoretical support for the low-carbon development of iron and steel industry as well as the optimization of carbon market. With panel data of China’s 29 provinces from 2006 to 2017, this study adopted a DEA-SBM model to measure carbon emission efficiency of China’s iron and steel industry (CEI) and a difference-in-differences (DID) method to explore the impact of emission trading on CEI. Moreover, regional heterogeneity and influencing mechanisms were further investigated, respectively. The results indicate that: (1) China's emission trading has a significant and sustained effect on carbon abatement of iron and steel industry, increasing the annual average CEI by 12.6% in pilot provinces. (2) The policy effects are heterogeneous across diverse regions. Higher impacts are found in the western and eastern regions, whereas the central region is not significant. (3) Emission trading improves CEI by stimulating technology innovation, reducing energy intensity, and adjusting energy structure. (4) Economic level and industrial structure are negatively related to CEI, while environmental governance and openness degree have no obvious impacts. Finally, according to the results and conclusions, some specific suggestions are proposed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 480-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunlai Chen

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on urban-rural income inequality in China. Design/methodology/approach This study uses the provincial-level panel data and employs the fixed-effects instrumental variable regression technique to investigate empirically the impact of FDI on urban-rural income inequality in China. Findings The study finds that while FDI has directly contributed to reducing urban-rural income inequality through employment creation, knowledge spillovers and contribution to economic growth, FDI has also contributed to increasing urban-rural income inequality through international trade. Practical implications The study has some policy implications. First, as the study finds that FDI not only contributes to reducing urban-rural income inequality through employment creation, knowledge spillovers and contribution to economic growth, but also contributes to increasing urban-rural income inequality through international trade, therefore, apart from improving local economic and technological conditions to attract more FDI inflows, China should re-design FDI policies by shifting away from encouraging export-oriented FDI to encouraging FDI flows into the industries and sectors in line with China’s overall economic structural adjustments and industrial upgrading. Second, policies should focus on increasing investment in infrastructure development and in public education, which not only can reduce urban-rural income inequality but also can attract more FDI inflows. And finally policies should be designed to accelerate urbanisation development by focusing on urban-rural integrated development, household registration system reform and proper settlement of rural migrants in urban areas, thus reducing urban-rural income inequality. Originality/value The paper makes two major contributions to the literature. First, the paper adopts the fixed-effects instrumental variable regression technique to deal with the endogeneity issues in estimating the impact of FDI on urban-rural income inequality, producing more consistent estimates. Second, the paper investigates not only the direct impact of FDI on urban-rural income inequality through the effects of employment creation, knowledge spillovers and contribution to economic growth, but also the indirect impact of FDI on urban-rural income inequality through its activities in international trade, adding new empirical evidence to the sparse literature on the impact of FDI on income inequality in China.


2022 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhaofu Yang ◽  
Yongna Yuan ◽  
Qingzhi Zhang

The carbon emission trading scheme (ETS) is an essential policy tool for accomplishing Chinese carbon targets. Based on the Chinese provincial panel data from 2003 to 2019, an empirical study is conducted to measure the effects of carbon emission reduction and spatial spillover effect by adopting the difference-in-differences (DID) model and spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model. The research findings show that: 1) The ETS effectively reduced the total carbon emissions as well as emissions from coal consumption; 2) such effects come mainly from the reduction of coal consumption and the optimization of energy structure, rather than from technological innovation and optimization of industrial structure in the pilot regions; and 3) the ETS pilot regions have a positive spatial spillover effect on non-pilot regions, indicating the acceleration effect for carbon emission reduction. Geographic proximity makes the spillover effect decrease due to carbon leakage.


Author(s):  
Chen Wang ◽  
Qingyan Yang ◽  
Shufen Dai

In implementing carbon emission trading schemes (ETSs), the cost of carbon embedded in raw materials further complicates supplier selection and order allocation. Firms have to make decisions by comprehensively considering the cost and the important intangible performance of suppliers. This paper uses an analytic network process–integer programming (ANP–IP) model based on a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to solve the above issues by first evaluating and then optimizing them. The carbon embedded in components, which can be used to reflect the carbon competitiveness of a supplier, is integrated into the ANP–IP model. In addition, an international large-scale electronic equipment manufacturer in China is used to validate the model. Different scenarios involving different carbon prices are designed to analyze whether China’s current ETS drives firms to choose more low-carbon suppliers. The results show that current carbon constraints are not stringent enough to drive firms to select low-carbon suppliers. A more stringent ETS with a higher carbon price could facilitate the creation of a low-carbon supply chain. The analysis of the firm’s total cost and of the total cost composition indicates that the impact of a more stringent ETS on the firm results mainly from indirect costs instead of direct costs. The indirect cost is caused by the suppliers’ transfer of part of the low-carbon investment in the product, and arises from buying carbon permits with high carbon prices. Implications revealed by the model analysis are discussed to provide guidance to suppliers regarding the balance between soft competitiveness and low-carbon production capability and to provide guidance to the firm on how to cooperate with suppliers to achieve a mutually beneficial situation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Aihua ◽  
Pier Paolo Miglietta ◽  
Pierluigi Toma

AbstractAs the highest carbon emission country in the world, it is particularly important to investigate the implementation effect of China’s carbon emission trading (CET) system. Because of the complexity to figure out the counterfactual effect when a single unit is treated, the counterfactual and causal effects of the CET system on the carbon emissions are seldom identified. In order to overcome the weakness that counterfactual effect is difficult to be verified and policy persistence is difficult to be estimated, Synthetic Control Method (SCM) and Regression Discontinuity (RD) are combined to better understand and evaluate the impact of CET system in China. Through the analysis, it is found that CET system is effective in China, but the effect is driven by economic development, energy consumption, FDI and other variables. Because of the differences in economic, geographical, technological and environmental conditions in various areas, each Chinese provincial government should formulate a targeted policy according to local conditions, ensuring an economic and environmentally sustainable growth in the future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5664
Author(s):  
Qiong Wu ◽  
Kanittha Tambunlertchai ◽  
Pongsa Pornchaiwiseskul

As China has an important role in global climate change, the Chinese government has set goals to improve its environmental efficiency and performance and launched carbon emission trading pilot markets in 2013, aiming to reduce CO2 emissions. Based on panel data of 30 provinces from 2005 to 2017, this paper uses the difference-in-difference method to study the impact of China’s carbon emission trading pilot markets on carbon emissions and regional green development. The paper also explores possible influencing channels. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) China’s carbon emission trading policy has promoted a reduction in CO2 emissions and carbon emission intensity and has increased green development in the pilot areas. (2) The main path for China’s carbon emission trading policy to achieve carbon emission reduction and regional green development is to promote technology adoption. (3) China’s carbon emission trading policy achieves green development through synergistic SO2 emission reduction. The pilot carbon markets have reduced both the amount of SO2 emissions and SO2 emission intensity.


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