Impact of China's green finance reform and innovation pilot zone policies on urban pollution and carbon emission reduction and their mechanisms
Finance is the lifeblood of the national economy,and green finance should provide high-quality services for the green devel-opment of the economy and society.The establishment of green finance reform and innovation pilot zones is an important initiative to ad-vance China's green finance reforms,playing a significant role in achieving environmental pollution control and the'dual carbon'goals.This study regarded the green finance reform and innovation pilot zones established in 2017 as a quasi-natural experiment.Based on panel data from 267 Chinese cities at or above prefecture level from 2012 to 2021 and using the difference-in-differences model,this study examined the impact of green finance pilot policies on urban pollution and carbon emission reduction and further analyzed their mechanisms and heterogeneity.The findings were as follows:① Green finance pilot policies significantly promoted urban pollution and carbon emission reduction,and this conclusion still held after a series of robustness tests.② Mechanism analysis showed that green fi-nance pilot policies mainly promoted pollution and carbon emission reduction by reducing energy intensity and encouraging green inno-vation,with the intermediary effect of energy intensity being more significant.③ From the perspective of heterogeneity,compared with eastern cities,cities with lower financial development levels,and non-resource-based cities,pilot policies had more pronounced effects on pollution and carbon emission reduction in central and western cities,cities with higher financial development levels,and resource-based cities.Therefore,it is necessary to expand the pilot work of green finance in an orderly manner and establish a coordinated mech-anism for promoting pollution and carbon emission reduction through green finance among regions to improve the quality and efficiency of green financial services for the real economy.By increasing support for energy conservation and technological innovation,it helps to leverage the incentive mechanism of optimizing resource allocation through green finance pilot policies,deepen the supply-side structur-al reform of green finance,strengthen the construction of digital service platforms for green finance,build a bridge between demand and supply of green finance,promote the matching of supply and demand of green finance according to local conditions,strengthen green fi-nance support for key areas and weak links,and promote coordinated efficiency of pollution and carbon emission reduction.
green financepollution and carbon emission reductiondifference-in-differencesenergy intensitygreen innovation
国家科技期刊平台
NSTL
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