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Abstract In the context of the global response to climate change and China’s promotion of high-quality economic development, how to cultivate the New Productive Forces has become a key issue. Carbon emission trading policy is the main market incentive environmental regulation. Its impact on the development of the New Productive Forces has attracted much attention. This paper takes the panel data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2010 to 2019 as the starting point, takes the carbon emission trading policy as the natural experiment, and uses the multi-time-point difference-difference model to deeply explore the impact, heterogeneity and internal mechanism of the policy on the New Productive Forces.
It is found that the implementation of carbon emission trading policy has a significant effect on the improvement of the development level of urban New Productive Forces, and carbon emission trading policy will promote the development of urban New Productive Forces through the upgrading of industrial structure and financial deepening effects, among which financial development scale and financial innovation ability have more significant promoting effects than financial development efficiency. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the policy has a stronger promoting effect on the development of the New Productive Forces in the eastern cities, central cities with high administrative levels and non-resource-based cities. In terms of quota allocation mode, free allocation mode and free allocation plus auction mode have a significant positive effect on the New Productive Forces of the city, while the allocation mode including free allocation, auction and price sale has no significant impact. Moreover, the higher the carbon price, the stronger the policy’s promotion of the New Productive Forces. Mechanism test shows that carbon emission trading policy mainly promotes the development of the New Productive Forces through industrial structure upgrading and financial deepening effects. In terms of industrial structure, policy implementation has improved the quality of inter-industry convergence and coordination and the ability to effectively use resources, and promoted the transfer of labor- and resource-intensive industries to technology- and digital-intensive industries. In terms of financial deepening, policies promote the increase in the scale of urban financial development and the improvement of financial innovation capacity, provide capital support for low-carbon industries, and reduce the financing friction of new forms of business. However, due to institutional constraints such as the supervision of the loan-to-deposit ratio, financial development efficiency plays a small role in promoting the development of the New Productive Forces. Compared with existing researches, this paper has the following three aspects of innovation. First, it expands the research scope of carbon emission trading policy, focuses on its impact on the New Productive Forces, and provides a new policy perspective for the development of the New Productive Forces. The second is an in-depth analysis of the influence mechanism, from the dual perspective of industrial structure upgrading and financial development to analyze the policy transmission path, deepening the understanding of the development mechanism of the New Productive Forces. Third, a comprehensive heterogeneity analysis was carried out from five dimensions: urban administrative level, resource endowment, geographical location, quota allocation mode and carbon emission rights transaction price, to provide a basis for the accurate implementation of policies. Finally, in terms of policy recommendations, this paper proposes that China needs to form policy synergy in the construction of carbon market system, upgrading of industrial structure, and optimization of financial system, and steadily promote the development of the New Productive Forces by stages and regions.
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Published: 22 January 2026
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