IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v219y2024ics092180092400034x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How does environmental regulation promote green technology innovation? Evidence from China's total emission control policy

Author

Listed:
  • Yan, Zheming
  • Yu, Ying
  • Du, Kerui
  • Zhang, Ning

Abstract

Whether environmental regulation incentivizes green technology innovations is debated in the literature. The potential endogeneity of environmental regulation is the major empirical challenge for identifying the causal effect of environmental regulation on green technology innovations. To address this issue, we use the quasi-natural experiment of China's Total Emission Control Policy as exogenous shocks of environmental regulation. Specifically, we construct a new dataset of the city-level emission reduction mandates and employ the difference-in-difference-in-differences estimation to explore how stringency of environmental regulation affects green technology innovations. The empirical results show that environmental regulation promotes green innovations. Further mechanism analysis shows environmental regulation can attract “new entrants” to join the green technology market and launch more green innovations. This paper further explores the significance of environmental regulation in narrowing the gap between green and non-green technologies.

Suggested Citation

  • Yan, Zheming & Yu, Ying & Du, Kerui & Zhang, Ning, 2024. "How does environmental regulation promote green technology innovation? Evidence from China's total emission control policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:219:y:2024:i:c:s092180092400034x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108137
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180092400034X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108137?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:219:y:2024:i:c:s092180092400034x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.