环境治理投入对经济增长的异质性影响研究——基于城市化的视角

在城市化水平不断提高的背景下,探究环境治理投入促进还是阻碍了经济增长,城市化在两者关系中扮演什么角色具有重要的现实意义。论文基于中国大陆2003—2015年31个省份的数据,运用面板门槛模型、系统广义矩估计方法探究环境治理投入与经济增长之间的关系。结果表明：1）环境治理投入与经济增长之间存在参数异质性,具有显著的门槛效应;2）环境治理投入对省际经济增长的影响因环境治理投入量的差异分为前期影响不显著、后期促进两个阶段;3）适度的城市化水平可以提高环境治理投入的效率,从而促进经济增长。基于此,论文认为应在继续增加环境治理投入的同时提高城市化水平,以城市化助力环境治理投入取得环境和经济效益的双赢。

Heterogeneous Impacts of Investments in Environmental Governance on Economic Growth: A Perspective from Urbanization

In recent years, environmental problems have attracted more and more attention in China, and there are more and more people calling for increasing investments in environmental governance with the deterioration of the environment. But whether or not the increasing environmental governance investments to control environmental pollution will be a burden to economic growth in China is one of the concerned issues for economists. Meanwhile, the environmental problems are accompanied by constantly increasing the level of urbanization. So, it’s of great practical significance to explore whether investments in environmental governance promote or hinder economic growth and what is the role that urbanization plays in this process. Based on data of 31 provinces in the mainland of China from 2003 to 2015, this paper uses panel threshold model to study the relationship between investments in environmental governance and economic growth and then uses methods of data envelopment analysis and system-generalized method of moments to explore the mechanism of this relationship. The results show that: 1) There are parameter heterogeneity and significant threshold effect between investments in environmental governance and economic growth, which indicates that the relationship between them is non-linear. 2) Due to the difference of the stock of investments in environmental governance in each province, the impact of investments in environmental governance on economics growth among the provinces in the mainland of China is divided into two stages: in the first stage the impact was not significant, but in the second stage investments in environmental governance promoted the economics growth, and elasticity coefficients in the two stages were -0.014 and 0.046, respectively. 3) Moderate urbanization can economically improve the efficiencies of investments in environmental governance and thus promote economic growth, which eliminates the concerns that an increase of investments in environmental governance on environmental pollution control will be a burden to economic growth in China. Based on these results, this paper suggests that we should continue to increase the investments in environmental governance and improve the level of urbanization at the same time. Achieving environmental and economic benefits with urbanization is a win-win situation.