scholarly journals Does Emission Trading Boost Carbon Productivity? Evidence from China’s Pilot Emission Trading Scheme

Author(s):  
Di Zhou ◽  
Xiaoyu Liang ◽  
Ye Zhou ◽  
Kai Tang

As the country with the largest carbon emissions globally, the effective operation of China’s carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) is of great importance to the global community in terms of mitigating climate change. This paper considers China’s pilot ETS launched in 2013 as a quasi-natural experiment. Exploring provincial industrial-level data that are more in line with the ETS coverage, the difference-in-difference-in-difference (DDD) model is used to evaluate the impact of the ETS on carbon productivity. Considering different pilot regions and industries, we also analyze the heterogeneous effect of ETS. Moreover, the mediating effects of technical progress and capital investment are explored. We find that China’s pilot ETS boosted carbon productivity. Among pilot regions, the best policy effectiveness appeared in Beijing, while the weakest effectiveness appeared in Chongqing. Among the pilot industries, the pilot ETS had better effectiveness in petrochemical and electric power industries and weaker effectiveness in building materials and transportation industries. Additionally, the pilot ETS promoted carbon productivity through both technological progress and capital investment, and the former contributed more. Our findings can provide empirical references and policy implications for nationwide implementation of ETS to further promote low-carbon economic transformation.

2014 ◽  
Vol 1073-1076 ◽  
pp. 2473-2476
Author(s):  
Li Wei Fan ◽  
Xun Zhou

This paper employed a non-radial efficiency analysis technique, namely slacks-based measure, to calculate the marginal abatement cost of carbon emissions. The study was concerning ten manufacturing sectors that have been included in Shanghai’s pilot emission trading scheme. The empirical result shows the overall weighted average marginal abatement cost is 839.3 Yuan/ton. It also indicates that the marginal abatement cost has a negative relationship with carbon emissions. Additionally, the marginal abatement costs vary across the sample sectors. Policy implications are presented based on above results.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuhua Zheng ◽  
Xiaoyang Sun ◽  
Chenyu Zhang ◽  
Daojuan Wang ◽  
Ju Mao

This paper explores the effect of China’s emission trading scheme (ETS) pilot policy implemented during 2013-2014 on carbon emission performance. Adopting the Difference-in-Difference (DID) model, we find that: 1) China’s ETS pilot policy can significantly improve the carbon emission performance of listed companies in the pilot provinces. 2) The heterogeneity analysis shows that the carbon emission performance of listed companies in the eastern coastal pilot areas has improved significantly, which is not significant in the central and western pilot areas. 3) We find that China’s ETS pilot policy can significantly improve innovation capabilities of listed companies, suggesting that innovation is a channel for the impact of the China’s ETS pilot policy on carbon emission performance in the pilot provinces. Overall, our study shows that ETS pilot policy has played a governance role in China and improved carbon emission performance. We further highlight some important policy implications with respect to helping companies save energy and reduce emissions, and promoting the further improvement of China’s ETS pilot policy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0958305X2110153
Author(s):  
Chao Li ◽  
Xiangyou Li ◽  
Deyong Song ◽  
Meng Tian

Based on the panel data of 277 cities between 2003 and 2017 and a unique city-level dataset of green patent applications, this study employs the difference-in-differences (DID) method to evaluate the effect of China’s carbon emission trading scheme (ETS) pilots on urban green innovation. The findings indicate that China’s ETS pilots have a positive impact on urban green innovation, and that impact is more significant for municipalities than for prefecture-level cities. Furthermore, the impact on different categories of urban green innovation is heterogeneous. More specifically, China’s ETS pilots have significantly spurred urban green innovation that is closely related to energy conservation and emission reduction, including alternative energy production, transportation, energy conservation and so forth. Moreover, the facilitating effect of China’s ETS pilots on urban green innovation suffers from a lagging effect, which began to show a significant positive effect in 2016. Overall, this paper identifies the effect of China’s ETS pilots on urban green innovation, and suggests that the government should consider the heterogeneity of urban green innovation when designing national ETS policies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hail Jung ◽  
Seyeong Song ◽  
Young-Hwan Ahn ◽  
Ha Hwang ◽  
Chang-Keun Song

AbstractSince the South Korean government enacted the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), companies have been striving to simultaneously improve productivity and reduce carbon emissions, which represent conflicting goals. We used firm-level emissions and corporate variables to investigate how ETS enactment has affected carbon productivity, which is a firm-level revenue created per unit of carbon emission. Results showed that firm-level carbon productivity increased significantly under the ETS, and such a trend was more evident for high-emission industries. We also found that companies with high carbon productivity were (1) profitable, (2) innovative, and (3) managed by CEOs with experience in environmental fields. These findings suggest that to achieve the conflicting goals of increasing corporate profits while reducing emissions, firms have to invest in green technologies, and such decisions are supported by green leadership. Our findings also have implications for corporate leadership; data highlight the importance of managing human resources and deploying investment policies to respond to ETS.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0958305X2110645
Author(s):  
Jung Youn Mo

This study investigates the relationship among technology innovation, emission trading schemes, and carbon productivity based on data from firms participating in the Korean Emission Trading Scheme. First, the total factor carbon productivity based on stochastic frontier analysis is estimated by industry and it is confirmed that changes in carbon productivity vary by industry. Based on the estimated carbon productivity, panel data analysis is conducted to determine the effects of innovation and environmental policy on carbon productivity. The results show that R&D investment and environmental policy play an important role in promoting carbon productivity. In this study, the factors affecting carbon productivity are also analyzed by industry. Comparative analysis across industries confirms that factors affecting environmental performance vary by industry. Innovation does not significantly affect carbon productivity in assembling industries, but in the process industry, R&D investment plays an important role in increasing environmental performance.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 380-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shandre Mugan Thangavelu

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of large inflow of foreign workers on the Singapore manufacturing productivity using a panel data at the disaggregated industry level from 1998 to 2008. The results indicate that foreign workers do make productive contribution to manufacturing productivity, but it is much lower as compared to local workers. However, the author observe the declining capital-labour ratio with the increase in the flow of foreign workers. This is expected to have direct impact on the competitiveness of the manufacturing in the export market. Since new technologies are embodied in new capital investment, the declining capital-labour ratio indicates that workers might be producing output with less technology-intensive capital. Conversely, local workers are more productive with high capital investment, indicating that local workers are more skilled and hence there is more complementarity between capital investments and local human capital. Design/methodology/approach – The author implement a panel estimation of disaggregated industry level data of Singapore manufacturing from 1998 to 2008. The author use GMM estimation to control for any endogeneity issues in the estimation. Findings – The results indicate that foreign workers do make productive contribution to manufacturing productivity; but it is much lower as compared to local workers. However; the author observe the declining capital-labour ratio with the increase in the flow of foreign workers. Research limitations/implications – The data for foreign workers at the disaggregated level is not publically available and this is given for this research purpose. The data for foreign workers is limited as it does not have by educational levels. Practical implications – This is the first paper to study impact of foreign workers on manufacturing sector at a disaggregated panel data. There are important policy implications for managing foreign workers and achieving sustainable growth for the Singapore economy. Social implications – The welfare and social impacts of foreign workers on the Singapore economy is discussed. There is also the issue of policy calibration to balance the flow of foreign workers in the Singapore economy. Originality/value – This is the first paper to study impact of foreign workers on manufacturing sector at a disaggregated panel data.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chin-Hong Puah ◽  
Meng-Chang Jong ◽  
Norazirah Ayob ◽  
Shafinar Ismail

The local and international communities play an important role in the sustainable growth of the Malaysian tourism industry. The principle of sustainable growth in the tourism industry was proposed by the World Tourism Organization (WTO) in 1988. As the tourism industry is one of the largest and fastest growing industries in Malaysia, the government has poured considerable effort into promoting this industry consistent with the objective of the Economic Transformation Program (ETP) to transform from a resource-based economy to a service-based economy. This study aimed to test the hypothesis of tourism-led growth from Malaysia’s perspective. The tourism revenue earned by the government can be used to invest in industry to further promote economic growth in Malaysia. Hence, tourist receipts and capital investment in the tourism industry are important factors that can affect the nation’s economic growth. Utilizing Malaysian data from 1995 to 2016, the study employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to examine whether the tourism-led growth is valid in this study. Empirical findings indicated that both variables have a significant positive impact on economic growth and the hypothesis of tourism-led growth is accepted in Malaysia.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delu Wang ◽  
Suqing Zhang ◽  
Yadong Wang ◽  
Jinqi Mao

Abstract The relationship between resource misallocation and productivity has become a hot topic in recent years, but few studies examined the impact of spatial misallocation of electric power resources (SMEPRs) on economic efficiency and carbon emissions. Here, we constructed a calculation model of SMEPRs that can measure both the misallocation degree and direction and uncovered the spatiotemporal evolvement mechanism of SMEPRs. On this basis, we explored the impact of SMEPRs on regional economic efficiency and carbon emissions using panel data from 29 provinces in China from 1988-2017. The results demonstrate that the high level of SMEPRs in China shows complex spatiotemporal characteristics and significantly affects the regional economic efficiency and carbon emissions. Specifically speaking: first, SMEPRs presents the characteristics of the coexistence of excessive and insufficient allocation among provinces and regions, the increasing extent of misallocation in the eastern and western regions, and the gradual decline in the central region; second, SMEPRs has a strong negative effect on the regional economic efficiency and carbon emissions by affecting regional industrial structures, which indicates that SMEPRs is an important factor restricting the high-quality development of regional economies. The research observations offer fresh insights to upgrading the high-quality and green development of China's power sector and promoting regional economic transformation and ecological sustainability.


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