Browsing by Author "Cui, J"

Now showing 1 - 13 of 13
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    Can green credit policy stimulate firms’ green investments?
    (International Review of Economics and Finance, 2024-03-01) Ma, Y; Lu, L; Cui, J; Shi, X
    Green credit policy, a market-oriented green financial tool, aims to achieve simultaneous economic development and environmental protection. Utilizing china's 2012 green credit policy as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper employs a difference-in-differences method to explore its causal impact on Chinese firms' green investment behavior. The empirical results indicate that the green credit policy significantly stimulates the green investments of firms in pollution-intensive sectors compared to those in non-pollution-intensive sectors. This finding remains robust across various tests, including parallel trends, dynamic effects, confounding factors, and alternative methods. Furthermore, the green investment-induced effect is reinforced by the supplementary green credit policy introduced in 2018. The heterogeneity effect reveals that the green credit policy facilitates the green investments of firms with undisclosed environmental information. Additionally, the study finds that the green investment-induced effects are more pronounced among firms with soft financial constraints, limited access to government subsidies, state-owned firms, and larger sizes. These findings shed light on the crucial role of green finance policy in promoting green recovery, suggesting that the government should increase the provision of green credit in terms of quantity and scope.
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    Can International Climate Cooperation Induce Knowledge Spillover to Developing Countries? Evidence from CDM
    (Environmental and Resource Economics, 2022-08-01) Cui, J; Wang, Z; Yu, H
    Under the Kyoto Protocol, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) expects to facilitate the North-South knowledge spillovers for climate-friendly technologies. This paper examines the effect of this voluntary international climate cooperation on firm innovation and knowledge spillovers through the lens of CDM projects in China. Using a matched Difference-in-Differences (DID) approach, we find that CDM projects contribute to firms’ innovation quantity, quality, and direction in renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. These effects are more pronounced in inducing wind, hydro, and solar energy. We explore the role of foreign sponsors in knowledge spillovers. Sponsoring firms play the technology supplier role by raising the innovation quantity and quality, while sponsoring governments perform the information intermediary role by facilitating citation flows.
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    Do institutional investors facilitate corporate environmental innovation?
    (Energy Economics, 2023-01-01) Xu, J; Zeng, S; Qi, S; Cui, J
    This paper addresses whether institutional investors drive firms’ innovation direction toward environmentally friendly technologies. The data pertain to comprehensive environmental patents filed by Chinese publicly-listed firms in the manufacturing and public utility sectors during the 2003–2015 period. We find that institutional investors are associated with higher ratios of environmental patents in total patents for firms in the pollution-intensive sectors than those in the non-pollution-intensive sectors. Institutional investors exert the roles of financial support and corporate governance in pursuit of monitoring firms’ long-term sustainable innovation. They further facilitate the information disclosure on corporate social responsibility.
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    Does China emission trading scheme reduce marginal abatement cost? A perspective of allowance allocation alternatives
    (Sustainable Production and Consumption, 2022-07-01) Peng, HR; Cui, J; Zhang, X
    Emission trading schemes (ETSs) are regarded as cost-effective environmental regulatory policies; however, because of the loose carbon allowances, it is up for debate whether China's carbon emission trading scheme (CETS) plays a cost-effective role in carbon emission reduction. This paper investigates how the marginal abatement cost (MAC) is changed by the China CETS from a perspective of alternative allowance allocation methods. The empirical strategy adopts the directional distance function and difference-in-difference (DID) analysis, coupled with the industry-by-province level data from 2008 to 2016. The roles of free-auction combined allowance allocation rules and free allocation in the MAC are explored. Furthermore, the heterogeneous effects of adopted free allocation in CETS, i.e., benchmarking (BENCH), emission-based grandfathering (EGRAND), and intensity-based grandfathering (IGRAND) on MAC of industries are investigated. The empirical findings disclose the following. First, China CETS results in an 8% decline in MAC for the regulated industrial sectors in pilot areas. Second, regulated industrial sectors allocated carbon allowances by free rule decrease their MAC by approximately 1%, while those allocated carbon allowances by free-auction combined rule increase their MAC by 11%. Meanwhile, of the free allocation alternatives, IGRAND causes a 24% increase in the MAC, while EGRAND and BENCH allocation methods lead to insignificant changes in the MAC for the regulated industrial sectors.
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    Environmental and economic effects of China's carbon market pilots: Empirical evidence based on a DID model
    (Journal of Cleaner Production, 2021-01-10) Qi, S; Cheng, S; Cui, J
    This paper investigates whether the China ETS policy has achieved carbon emission reduction at the expense of economic development. Moreover, we are interested in unmasking the role of the institutional factors adopted by the ETS pilots in their ETS effects. Using the province-level panel data during the 2008–2016 period. we employ the DID model to compare carbon emissions and economic development between the ETS and non-ETS regions and between the pre- and post-ETS periods. Some novel empirical findings emerge. First, compared with the non-ETS areas, the ETS policy has significantly reduced carbon emission in the ETS areas. This emission reduction has not come at the cost of economic development. Second, the ETS policy leads to a decline in carbon intensity and fossil fuel energy consumption relative to all energy types. Lastly, some heterogeneity across markets arise. The Beijing carbon market performs the best among all pilots in terms of achieving targets of carbon reductions, followed by the Hubei carbon market.
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    Firm internal network, environmental regulation, and plant death
    (Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2020-05) Cui, J; Moschini, GC
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    South-South cooperation and food security: Evidence from Chinese agricultural technology demonstration Center in Africa
    (China Economic Quarterly International, 2024-03-01) Lin, S; Cui, J
    Using the Chinese Agriculture Technology Demonstration Center (ATDC) in Africa as a quasi-natural experiment, we examine the causal impacts of China's aid on crop production in Africa. The data pertain to African country-by-crop panel data from 2000 to 2018. Leveraging the triple difference-in-differences method, we find that the ATDC leads to increased crop production and improved trade dependence. The positive effects are more pronounced for free-standing technical support and ATDCs operated by state-owned enterprises. Lastly, the ATDC has profound implications for local agriculture and rural development.
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    Technological forecasting & social change does environmental regulation induce green innovation? a panel study of Chinese listed firms
    (Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2022-03-01) Cui, J; Dai, J; Wang, Z; Zhao, X
    To promote cleaner production, China launched nation-wide Cleaner Production Audit (CPA) program in 2004. This study examines the “weak” version of the Porter hypothesis while focusing on Chinese listed firms from 1990 to 2010. In this study, we provided evidence on the influence of China's CPA program on innovation based on green patent data. Using a difference-in-difference (DID) method, we find that there is a positive regulation effect on green innovation, i.e. the “weak” Porter hypothesis has been realized in the CPA program in China. Moreover, our results suggest that the regulation effect is more pronounced in encouraging radical green innovations measured by environmental invention patents than incremental green innovation measured by environmental utility patents. Then, we find that the CPA program regulatory effect is also affected by moderation variables such as industrial pollution intensity, but not by firm ownership. Our findings shed light on the policy implications on how firms respond to environmental regulations.
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    The environmental and economic effects of the carbon emissions trading scheme in China: The role of alternative allowance allocation
    (Sustainable Production and Consumption, 2021-10-01) Peng, H; Qi, S; Cui, J
    This paper examines the impact of China's carbon emission trading scheme (ETS) on carbon emissions reduction and economic performance with a focus on the role of alternative allowance allocation. Using the industry-by-province panel data during the 2008-2016 period, the empirical strategy employs a difference-in-difference-in-difference model. Some novel findings emerge. First, the ETS leads to a reduction in carbon emissions and emission intensity, in particular, for those adopting the benchmarking allowance allocation. Second, the reduction in carbon emissions arises from an increase in energy efficiency. Moreover, the adjustment of energy structure is more favorable to ETS regions adopting the benchmarking allocation rule compared with ETS regions using the grandfathering one. Third, the ETS has muted impacts on employment and returns on assets. A further comparison between the benchmarking and grandfathering rules reveals that the former is associated with a rise in employment, while the latter leads to an increase in returns on assets. In line with the findings, it is recommended that the government should further develop the benchmarking value of the sub-sectors, and gradually transform the allowance allocation methods into the benchmarking-dominated method for China ETS.
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    The environmental effect of trade liberalization: Evidence from China's manufacturing firms
    (World Economy, 2020-01-01) Cui, J; Tam, OK; Wang, B; Zhang, Y
    © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd While prior literature on trade liberalisation and the environment has mostly focused on the macroeconomic ramifications, this study explores at the firm level whether and how changes of trade barriers brought about by China's accession to the WTO may impact on its manufacturing firms’ environmental performance. Adopting a difference-in-differences (DID) methodology, we document the effects of tariff reductions on improving firm-level SO2 emission intensity, and the key corporate strategic decisions responsible for delivering the observed results, with robustness tests covering other major pollutants. In response to trade liberalisation, firms are found to increase labour resources for environmental protection and to improve their production processes to reduce emission intensity. This study contributes to the literature by investigating at the level of the operating firm how output and input tariff reductions may impact on environmental performance and uncovering for the first time the specific actions responsible for the results.
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    The impact of air quality on innovation activities in China
    (Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2023-10-01) Cui, J; Huang, S; Wang, C
    Severe air quality hurts human capital and threatens innovative outcomes. Using unique data containing 12.8 million patent applications in China, this paper examines the causal effect of particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 μm or less (PM2.5) on patent innovation. We estimate a two-stage least square model with thermal inversion as an instrumental variable. Our findings show that a one μg/m3 increase in the annual average PM2.5 concentration leads to a 1.3% decrease in the number of patents. Annual fluctuations in PM2.5 concentration levels across cities caused the total number of patents to decrease by 1.1% during the 2006–2010 period. From 2011 to 2015, the improvement in air quality increased the number by about 2.0%. It demonstrates another innovation co-benefit of improving air quality due to the tightened regulation.