The Mixed Impact of Environmental Regulations and External Financing Constraints on Green Technological Innovation of Enterprise

Is the establishment of city commercial banks more efficient in promoting green innovation?

Green innovation is an important way to realize the "double carbon" target, but financial support is necessary and important. This paper uses the multi-period difference-in-difference method to estimate the impact of city commercial banks on city green innovation. The data sample is the panel data of 285 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2019. Based on the empirical results, it can be concluded that city commercial banks can significantly promote green innovation, but have no significant contribution to the unbiased technological progress expressed by total factor productivity, i.e., overall innovation, while indicating that they are more efficient in promoting green innovation than overall innovation. This finding is still valid after a series of robustness, placebo, and parallel trend tests. After considering the moderating effect of environmental regulations, we find that market-incentive environmental regulation has a significant moderating effect on green innovation promotion, whereas command-control environmental regulation does not. On this basis, we propose policy recommendations to promote the development of city commercial banks; strengthen green innovation in central and western China, be both rigid and flexible in their approach to environmental regulation; and improve legal regulations.

The Impact of Environmental Regulations on Pollution and Carbon Reduction in the Yellow River Basin, China

Based on data from 69 cities in the Yellow River Basin from 2006-2018, this paper examines the impact of environmental regulations on the integrated management of air pollution and CO₂ emissions and its mechanism of action using a two-way stationary model. The results found that: (1) The impact of environmental regulations on air pollution and CO₂ emissions in the Yellow River Basin has an inverted U-shaped trend, the intensity of regulation is still on the left side of the inverted U-shaped curve, and the inflection point has not yet appeared. (2) Environmental regulations suppressed air pollution and CO₂ emissions by adjusting industrial structure, promoting technological innovation, and improving energy efficiency, but the current intensity of regulation is not sufficient to make the three paths fully effective. (3) The pollution and carbon reduction effects of environmental regulations are more significant in areas with higher marketization and resource dependence, national urban agglomerations, and the middle reaches of the Yellow River Basin. However, environmental regulations in other regions only show significant pollution reduction effects, and there is still more room for improving carbon reduction governance. Therefore, the Yellow River Basin should strengthen environmental regulations to promote ecological governance and high-quality development.

Environmental Regulation, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Disclosure and Enterprise Green Innovation: Evidence from Listed Companies in China

The resource and environmental constraints on China's economic development have become more prominent; thus there is an urgent need for enterprises to achieve green innovation transformation to promote high-quality economic development. We obtained data on 655 on Chinese A-share companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2010 to 2020, a total of 7205 samples, and explored the influencing mechanism of environmental regulation on corporate green innovation and the moderating mechanism of CSR disclosure by constructing a nonlinear fixed-effect regression model. The results showed: (1) the overall level of green innovation of listed companies is low, and the relationship between environmental regulation and enterprise green innovation presents the U-shaped characteristic of changing from cost effect to innovation compensation effect; (2) non-state-owned enterprises have less tolerance and more sensitive response to environmental regulation than state-owned enterprises; (3) social responsibility information disclosure has a positive regulatory effect on environmental regulation and enterprise green innovation, and non-state-owned enterprises are more significant. It provides references for the government to adjust the intensity of environmental regulation, and, meanwhile, for enterprises to improve the level of environmental protection and the CSR disclosure, and enhance the green innovation ability of enterprises in emerging market.