Suchergebnisse

Environmental regulation (ER) and local protectionism (LP) are important policy tools for Chinese local governments to improve the environment and promote growth, respectively, but we know little about their interplay in dealing with pollution-intensive industries and enterprises. Using spatial correlation analysis and spatial panel simultaneous equations models, we investigated the spatial characteristics and interactions of the ER and LP in China's 285 prefectural cities. We found that the high-ER-intensity areas were spreading from the eastern to the central and western regions, and the patterns of LP transited from high in the north and low in the south to high in the west and low in the east. There was a negative correlation spatially between ER and LP. LP could inhibit the increase in ER intensity, while the continuously increasing ER intensity could restrict LP through the competitive behavior from the "race to the bottom" to the "race to the top" among local governments. The effect of ER restricting LP was significant from 2008 to 2013 and prominent in the east, which was dominated by "race to the top" competition, while LP had a greater inhibitory effect on ER in the central and western regions, which preferred to obtain tax revenues from pollution-intensive industries. The results imply that removing the roots of local protectionism, improving the environmental governance system, and formulating differentiated regional environmental regulatory measures will help local governments balance economic growth and environmental protection.

Using a decomposition method, this paper proposes an analytical framework to investigate the mechanisms by which agricultural support policies affect farmers' use of fertilizers in agriculture in China. The mechanisms are decomposed into "three effects" (structural, scale, and technological effects). It is found that China's agricultural support polices have significantly contributed to the increased use of agricultural fertilizers through encouraging farmers to bring more land under cultivation (the scale effect). Meanwhile, some policies have also helped reduce fertilizer consumption when farmers were motivated to increase the area of grains crops (the structural effect). The role of technological progress in affecting fertilizer consumption (the technological effect) appears to be minimal and uncertain. Compared to direct subsidies, indirect subsidies play a much greater role in affecting farmers' production decision making and are more environmentally consequential. This paper argues that some of China's agricultural support policies are not well aligned with one key objective of the country's rural policies—improving environmental sustainability. It is recommended that the government takes measures to reform agricultural support policies and to reconcile agricultural and rural policies in order to achieve sustainable rural development.

AbstractThis paper examines the changing spatial distribution of electronic information manufacturing (EIM) industry in China by focusing on the location choice of new firms. A three‐pronged "global‐regional‐local" nexus framework was proposed to identify the factors that influence firm location choice. Tobit regression analysis was performed to evaluate the impacts of these factors. The study reveals the spatial concentration of the EIM industry and a trend of westward diffusion. The regression analyses stratified by time period and by region demonstrate spatial and temporal variabilities in the influence of many factors, especially the regional advantage factors (e.g., labor cost, localization economies, and urbanization economies). Meanwhile, some factors, such as foreign direct investment, the presence of state‐owned enterprises, and local government policies, show stable effects over time and across regions.

Some scholars have already proved the important role of agglomeration in studying how environmental regulation (ER) affects the location of polluting firms. However, further research is needed on both the mechanism and the empirical evidence. This paper reports the construction of a location database of new chemical plants in China's Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), where a fixed-effects panel threshold regression model was used to explore the agglomeration threshold of effective ER. We found a single agglomeration threshold for the whole YREB region that represented the turning point of ER from excluding to attracting new chemical enterprises. Additionally, there were two agglomeration thresholds in the lower reaches. If agglomeration reached the lower threshold, the effect of ER changed from repulsion to nonsignificant attraction. Once above the upper threshold, the attraction effect became large and significant. The results for this region were consistent with the Porter hypothesis. Furthermore, there was a single agglomeration threshold in the middle reaches. When agglomeration level exceeded the threshold, the repellant effect of ER was no longer significant. In the upper reaches, we found no valid threshold and ER always exhibited a small and nonsignificant exclusion effect. The pollution haven hypothesis was more explanatory in the middle and upper reaches. In the end, some suggestions are provided to support the government to formulate differentiated environmental policies.

AbstractWith rising environmental regulations and trade disputes, Chinese industries are facing tremendous pressures to restructure and relocate, and pollution‐intensive industries (PIIs) are undergoing particularly significant location adjustment. Scholars have proposed various location theories and econometric models to explain the investment location dynamics of PIIs. However, there are still some deficiencies in the analysis of effective factors, such as macroeconomic changes, uneven development, and enterprise heterogeneity. This paper aims to explore the influencing factors of PIIs location choice from multiple dimensions by integrating multiple location factors and incorporating the variables of temporal, spatial, firm heterogeneity and their interaction items into an econometric model. Based on the capacity investment database for Chinese listed chemical companies, we find that: (a) the investment of chemical firms in the central and western regions has significant regional proximity, while the investment in the eastern region shows a significant north‐south difference. (b) The macroeconomic situation measured by the industry climate index has the greatest effect, magnifies the influence of environmental regulation (ER) and expands the differences of investment location preferences between non‐stated‐owned enterprises (non‐SOEs) and state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), due to SOEs' have undertaken more social responsibilities. (c) The agglomeration economy significantly increases the probability of investment in all regions, especially in the eastern region; non‐SOEs are more inclined to invest in the central and western regions than SOEs. We conclude that PIIs use a location strategy to adapt to the changing environment and that the effect of ER is mediated through ownership structure and local context.