Can intellectual property rights protection reduce air pollution? A quasi-natural experiment from China

Kangjuan Lv, Minjie Pan, Li Huang, Daqiang Song and Xinlei Qian

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 2023, vol. 65, issue C, 210-222

Abstract: China began to implement the National Intellectual Property Rights Demonstration Cities (NIPRDC) policy in 2012 to strengthen intellectual property rights (IPR) system. Few studies have focused on the effects of IPR protection on air pollution. Using a panel data set of 268 Chinese cities from 2003 to 2016, this study is the first to adopt a multi-period difference-in- differences (DID) method to examine the effect and mechanism of the NIPRDC policy on air pollution. The results show that the establishment of NIPRDC can effectively reduce the level of urban air pollution, resulting from the effects of technological innovation and industrial structure. Moreover, the air pollution reduction effect of the NIPRDC policy is found to be more significant in resource-based cities. In addition, panel quantile regression results show that the strength of IPR protection helps to improve air quality in high-polluting areas. These findings provide new evidence for the relationship between IPR protection and air pollution, and also provide policy guidance for developing countries seeking both innovation and environmental protection.

Keywords: Air pollution; Multi-period DID; Intellectual property rights protection; National intellectual property rights demonstration cities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0954349X2300022X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:streco:v:65:y:2023:i:c:p:210-222

DOI: 10.1016/j.strueco.2023.02.010

Access Statistics for this article

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics is currently edited by F. Duchin, H. Hagemann, M. Landesmann, R. Scazzieri, A. Steenge and B. Verspagen

More articles in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().