Does environmental regulation reduce China's haze pollution? An empirical analysis based on panel quantile regression

The effect of heterogeneous environmental regulations on the employment skill structure: The system-GMM approach and mediation model

Environmental regulation has played an essential function in reducing pollution and it also influences the flow of labor. Although studies on employment and environmental regulation have gained prominence, most researches ignore the heterogeneity of regulatory tools and its discrepant impacts on different skilled labor; moreover, few literatures have explored how environmental regulations affect employment. Therefore, this study creatively incorporates environmental regulation, industrial green transformation and employment skill structure into a unified analytical framework, categorizing environmental regulations into command-and-control type, market-incentive type and voluntary type and analyzing the heterogeneous influences of environmental regulations on employment skill structure. Meanwhile, we explore the indirect impact of environmental regulations on the employment skill structure from the mediating role of industrial green transformation. The following are the research findings: (1) From a national perspective, both command-and-control and market-incentive types present a U-shaped association with employment skill structure, and their intensity has not surpassed the turning point yet; while the voluntary type is positively connected with the employment skill structure. (2) From the regional analysis, the findings in central and western areas are consistent with the national results; while the market-incentive and voluntary types show a reciprocal U-shaped connection with employment skill structure in eastern, and their regulatory intensity is in the rising stage of the curve. (3) Industrial green transformation acts as a partly mediator between market-incentive type and employment skill structure, but presents a suppression effect between command-and-control type, voluntary type, and employment skill structure. This paper takes industrial green transformation as the mediating variable, which emphasizes the importance of industrial green transformation and enhances the understanding on the mechanism of environmental regulation influencing employment skill structure. The research results provide theoretical support and significant reference for China in formulating policies to facilitate industrial green transformation, mitigate pollution, and optimize employment skill structure.

Does the Clean Air Action Really Affect Labor Demand in China?

How to balance resources, environment, and economic growth to achieve sustainable development is a challenge for developing countries. In 2013, China implemented a high-stringency environmental regulation—the Clean Air Action, which has effectively controlled air pollution. To explore the economic cost of environmental regulation, this paper investigates the policy effect on employment in the industrial sector. However, there are still controversies about whether environmental regulations impact employment. Based on the city-level data and firm-level data, this study applied a quasi-natural experiment for policy evaluation and used the mediating effect model for mechanism analysis. The difference-in-difference estimation results show that environmental regulation has a significant impact on employment. The mechanism analysis verifies that output adjustment, capital input, and green innovation are the main channels, by which environmental regulation distresses employment. The findings of this paper could be extended to other countries at a similar stage of development.

How industrial upgrading can improve China's air quality: empirical analysis based on multilevel growth model

With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization in China, the ecological environment has been damaged, especially the air quality, which has negatively impacted the productivity and lives of residents. China has taken various measures to improve air quality, and industrial upgrading is one of these measures. This article uses urban and provincial data from 2015 to 2018 and a multilevel growth model to study how industrial upgrading can improve air quality. The following conclusions are drawn through empirical analysis. If industrial upgrading is not considered, with time, air quality will gradually deteriorate. However, once the country adopts strategic measures for industrial upgrading, the combined effect of industrial upgrading and time will improve air quality. Industrial upgrading and industrial restructuring jointly reduce air pollution and have a significant impact on the improvement of air quality. Company goals for economic profit and survival will eventually lead to overall industrial upgrades that have little effect on air improvement. According to the empirical results, this paper puts forward some suggestions to improve the air quality.