李光勤 郭畅 薛青
Does Environmental Decentralization Restrict Export Trade? Based on Regulatory Effect of Local Government Competition and Environmental Regulation
Li Guangqin, Guo Chang and Xue Qing
摘要: 地方政府通过扩大出口来实现经济增长的同时，又希望通过加强环境分权来实现环境保护目标，那么环境分权是否阻碍了地区的出口贸易？本文将环境分权与出口贸易纳入同一分析框架，利用2000-2015年31个省份的面板数据考察环境分权对中国出口贸易的影响。研究结果显示：环境分权并没有限制出口贸易的增加，反而对出口贸易具有显著且稳定的促进作用，将万人来信来访数量作为环境分权的工具变量，采用两阶段最小二乘法的估计结果仍然显著；分区域来看，环境分权对中国出口贸易的影响存在显著的区域异质性，环境分权对中部地区出口贸易的促进作用最为显著，其次是东部地区，最后是西部地区；分三项分解指标来看，环境行政分权对出口贸易的促进作用最为明显，环境监察分权度次之，环境监测分权的影响最小；分时间段来看，环境分权对出口贸易的影响在2008年前后存在明显差异。进一步研究发现，地方政府竞争和环境规制对环境分权促进出口贸易产生调节效应。基于此，本文从推进环境分权体制改革、制定差异化的地区环境治理政策、完善地方政府激励机制三个方面提出对策建议。
关键词：环境分权；出口贸易；地方政府竞争；环境规制；工具变量
Abstract: While local governments achieve economic growth by expanding exports, they also hope to achieve environmental protection goals by strengthening environmental decentralization. Does environmental decentralization hinder regional export trade? Incorporating environmental decentralization and export trade into the same analysis framework, this paper examines the influence of environmental decentralization on export trade using the panel data of 31 provinces from 2000 to 2015.The results show that: environmental decentralization does not limit the increase of exports, but promotes the increase of exports, taking the number of letters and visits of 10 thousand people as instrumental variable of environmental decentralization, the estimation results are still significant using the 2SLS method. From the perspective of sub regions, the impact of environmental decentralization on China's export trade has significant regional heterogeneity. The promotion effect of environmental decentralization on the export trade of the central region is the most significant, followed by the eastern region, and finally the western region. According to the three decomposition indicators, the promotion effect of environmental administrative decentralization on export trade is the most obvious, followed by the decentralization of environmental supervision and environmental monitoring The impact of environmental decentralization on export trade is the least; the impact of environmental decentralization on export trade is significantly different before and after 2008.Further research shows that local government competition and environmental regulation have a regulatory effect on environmental decentralization to promote import and export trade. Based on this, this paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions from three aspects: promoting the reform of environmental decentralization system, formulating differentiated regional environmental governance policies, and improving the incentive mechanism of local governments.
Keywords: Environmental Decentralization; Export Trade; Local Government Competition; Environmental Regulation; Instrumental Variables
基金项目：浙江省自然科学基金项目“环境污染与健康成本：理论模型与中国经验证据”（LY18G030014）和安徽财经大学研究生科研创新基金项目“环境分权对外商直接投资的影响研究——基于省级面板数据的经验分析”（ACYC2019060）
