环境规制、技术距离与异质性企业研发选择

文章从技术异质性角度,指出环境规制产生的利润削弱效应和摆脱规制效应下,异质性企业有不同的研发选择。环境规制一方面会削弱企业研发的边际收益,不利于企业研发;另一方面也会刺激企业增加研发以摆脱环境规制成本。这两种效应在不同技术企业中的差异会导致异质性企业截然不同的研发选择。为此,文章首先构建一个理论模型,推导出环境规制产生的利润削弱效应和摆脱规制效应下,不同技术企业的研发选择。发现对于高生产率企业,环境规制产生的摆脱规制效应超过利润削弱效应,环境规制力度增加会刺激企业增加研发;而对于低生产率企业,环境规制产生的利润削弱效应起主导作用,环境规制力度增加反而阻碍企业研发。进一步利用环境规制的政策实验和工业企业微观数据,对以上观点进行实证检验。发现环境规制对企业研发的影响取决于其所处的技术水平,这不仅体现在集约边际企业的研发投入上,也体现在广延边际企业是否研发的选择上。集约边际上,环境规制增加了高生产率企业的研发投入,但这种作用随着企业与技术前沿的距离增加而递减,最终逆转为减少低生产率企业研发投入。广延边际上,环境规制使低生产率企业相对高生产率企业进入研发的概率更低,而退出研发的概率却更高。

Environmental Regulation,Technological Distance and R&D of Heterogeneous Firms

China has relied too much on extensive growth mode of high energy consumption and high pollution for a long time, which has led to deterioration of environment. In order to curb the environmental pollution, the 19th CPC National Congress has made pollution prevention as one of the three critical battles in the next few years to achieve economic restructuring. However, the formulation of this policy coincides with the downturn of China's economy and the increasing burden on enterprises. Whether environmental regulations increase the burden of enterprises and hinder enterprise innovation or stimulate them to execute green innovation to achieve transformation, is the key to the future formulation of environmental policies.However, there are not consistent conclusions on the impact of environmental regulations on enterprise innovation in existing literatures. It is no doubt that data and methods play important role in this inconsistent conclusion, but the main reason is existing literatures often neglect firm heterogeneity. On the one hand, environmental regulation weakens marginal revenue of R&D; on the other hand, environmental regulation can stimulate enterprises to increase R&D to get rid of the cost of environmental regulation. Heterogeneous enterprises face different constraints under these effects induced by environmental regulation, which leads to different R&D activities.This paper builds a theoretical model to deduce the effect of environmental regulation on R&D activities of heterogeneous firms under escaping regulation effect and profit reducing effect. We find that escaping regulation effect exceeds profit reducing effect for high-productivity firms, and environmental regulation simulates high-productivity firms to increase R&D. But for low-productivity firms, profit reducing effect is dominant and environmental regulation hinders R&D.Then we use total pollution emission control plan in 11^th Five-Year Plan and micro industrial enterprise data to verify the above theoretical viewpoints. The results indicate the impact of environmental regulation on R&D depends on productivity of firms. This different effect is not only reflected in R&D investment in intensive margins, but also reflected in choice of R&D or not in extensive margins. In intensive margins, environmental regulation stimulates high-productivity firms to increase R&D investment, but this effect is diminishing as the distance from the frontier technology increases and eventually reverse to hinder R&D investment of low-productivity firms. In extensive margins, under strict environmental regulation, low-productivity firms have lower probability to begin in R&D than high-productivity firms, but higher probability to quit in R&D than high-productivity firms.The contributions of this paper are as follows:Firstly, we point out heterogeneous firms have different R&D activities under escaping regulation effect and profit reducing effect induced by environmental regulation. Secondly, we provide a methodological reference for future research to overcome measurement difficulties and endogenous problems of environmental regulation by using policy experiments. In addition, the research conclusions have implications for future environmental regulation policy. Government should give careful consideration to the different effect of environmental regulation on heterogeneous firms, and introduce some compensatory policies to overcome the negative incentive of environmental regulation on low-productivity enterprises.