Open AccessThe impact of environmental regulation on green total factor productivity: An empirical analysis
Author(s) -
Qigai He,
Yaowu Han,
Lei Wang
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0259356
Subject(s) - environmental quality , total factor productivity , environmental regulation , china , econometrics , economics , productivity , data envelopment analysis , natural resource economics , mathematics , statistics , ecology , geography , macroeconomics , biology , archaeology
The transformation of China’s economy from extensive growth to high-quality development is essentially an increase in green total factor productivity (GTFP). China currently has a range of environmental regulation tools, and the question of whether environmental regulation can promote improvement in China’s GTFP requires theoretical and empirical analysis. This article first divides environmental regulation into three types: administrative, market-based and information-based. It then builds an empirical model of the effect of environmental regulation on GTFP. Slacks based measure-data envelope analysis (SBM-DEA) and the Malmquist index are used to measure the GTFP of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2018, and a measurement model of the impact of environmental regulation on GTFP is established. The results show that: (1) there are significant differences in GTFP in eastern, central and western China; (2) there is a non-linear relationship between environmental regulations and GTFP.