Can Low-Carbon Transition Impact the High-Quality Development of the Manufacturing Industry?—Experience Evidence from a Low-Carbon Pilot Policy

Keqiang Wang and Chunxin Lin ()
Additional contact information
Keqiang Wang: School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China
Chunxin Lin: School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 23, 1-27

Abstract: Low-carbon transition is a wide-ranging and deep economic and social transformation. Can we enhance high-quality development of the manufacturing industry (HQDM) during the low-carbon transition process? The enactment of the low-carbon city pilot policy (LCCP) is considered a “quasinatural experiment”. This study initially constructs a theoretical model of the impact of the policy on the high-quality development of a company. A staggered DID approach is then employed to evaluate this impact, using microdata from listed manufacturing enterprises from 2003 to 2021, and a variety of robustness tests, such as PSM-DID and the double machine learning method, are also employed. The main results show that the LCCP led to a significant 9.8% increase in the TFP of the manufacturing industry in the pilot regions. Therefore, the LCCP promoted the HQDM. The impact of the policy has demonstrated a year-by-year upward trend. The influence mechanism test demonstrates that the LCCP resulted in a 14.3% improvement in resource allocation within the manufacturing of the pilot regions but led to a 0.3% decrease in technological innovation. In addition, the LCCP has been more effective in promoting the HQDM in western regions, along with in state-owned enterprises and low-technology manufacturing industries. This paper offers valuable insights into the implementation of differentiated low-carbon policies for manufacturing industries in different regions with different characteristics.

Keywords: low-carbon transition; low-carbon city pilot policy; high-quality development of manufacturing; technological innovation effects; resource allocation effects; staggered DID (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/23/10739/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/23/10739/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:23:p:10739-:d:1538608

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().