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作者

Juan Tang, Shihu Zhong, Guocheng Xiang

来源

INTERNATIONAL REGIONAL SCIENCE REVIEW,

语言

英文

关键字

environmental regulation, innovation, directed technical change, economic growth, win-win effect

作者单位

1School of Business, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan, China;2School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China;3College of Economics and Trade, Hunan University of Commerce, Changsha, China

摘要

Can environmental regulation be used to promote directed technical change and economic growth simultaneously? We construct an endogenous economic growth model that includes environmental regulation, the extent of environmental pollution, and economic performance in a general equilibrium framework. We show that in the absence of government intervention, environmental pollution will not automatically disappear as economic growth increases. Furthermore, “threshold constraints” result from “path dependence” in the type of innovation; only when the rate of carbon tax and carbon reduction subsidy reaches a certain extent will individuals (or producers) redirect technical change toward “clean” energy production technologies innovation and away from “dirty” energy production technologies. Our article also discloses the intrinsic principle and micromechanism of environmental regulation to promote economic growth and finds that strict environmental regulation will both significantly promote the evolving labor division in clean energy production technologies innovation and achieve the benefits of improved average labor productivity in the production sector and the market size of goods, so that the benefit exceeds the switching cost.