Assessment of the Impact of China’s Carbon Emissions Trading Pilot Policy on the Export Product Quality

This paper carries out the quasi-natural experiment on China’s carbon emissions trading pilot policy to assess the impact of China’s carbon emissions trading pilot policy on the export product quality of enterprises in the pilot areas by using the data of listed companies and China Customs, and employing the DDD method. Meanwhile, it analyzes the heterogeneity of the impact under different ownership attributes and energy-intensive attributes of enterprises. The empirical results are as follows. First, due to the implementation of the carbon emissions trading pilot policy, the enterprises in the included industries bear the emission reduction cost. The export product quality of the enterprises in the included industries in the pilot areas is negatively affected compared with that of nonincluded enterprises in the nonpilot areas. Second, the impact of the carbon emissions trading pilot policy on the export product quality of enterprises may be heterogeneous due to the different ownership attributes of enterprises. The carbon emissions trading pilot policy significantly reduces the export product quality of non-state-owned enterprises, but has no significant effect on state-owned enterprises. Third, the impact of the carbon emissions trading pilot policy on the export product quality of enterprises is heterogeneous due to different energy-intensive attributes of enterprises. The carbon emissions trading pilot policy significantly reduces the export product quality of enterprises in energy-intensive industries, but it does not have a significant impact on enterprises in non-energy-intensive industries.