Factor input structure,environmental policies,and the export quality upgrade: a perspective of heterogeneity

In the analysis of how environmental regulation affects the comparative advantage of trade, existing literature ignores industry’s inherent heterogeneity, which draws remarkably different conclusions. In view of this, the paper analyzed the mechanism of environmental regulation on the export quality of different industries from the perspective of factor input structure heterogeneity. Based on the panel data of China’s manufacturing industry, the paper used the system generalized method of moments method to examine the heterogeneity influence of environmental regulation on manufacturing export quality. The study found that, first, environmental regulation affected the export quality upgrade of the manufacturing sector through offset effect and compensation effect, and the direction of the impact would mainly depend on the industry’s factor input structure. Second, for industries with larger fixed-asset investment (FAI) ratio in the factor input structure, the current environmental regulation policy was not conducive to the export quality upgrading of the industries. However, there was a significant U-shaped dynamic relationship between them. As environmental regulations became stricter, when regulatory stringency went beyond the inflection point, the policy would promote the upgrading of export quality. But for industries with smaller proportion of FAI, environmental regulation exerted a favorable impact on the export quality upgrade, following a J-shaped marginal growth curve. Third, for industries with different factor input structure, their export quality had been effectively upgraded as expected by factors like human capital investment, independent R&D, technology introduction, and foreign direct investment; but raising per capita capital stock and expanding enterprise size did not produce significant direct impact on export quality upgrade. These conclusions remained robust after using different measurement methods and replacing with other variables. Therefore, this paper suggests that governments should take industry heterogeneity into consideration and formulate differentiated hierarchical environmental policies. Besides, they should strengthen the enforcement of the current environmental regulation policies. By doing so, enterprises are forced to improve their technology and product quality so that they can better cope with rising compliance costs, eliminate backward industries, and resolve excess capacity. In this way, the economic structure would be transformed and upgraded from the supply side.