The Impact of Economic Growth, FDI and Energy Intensity on China’s Manufacturing Industry’s CO 2 Emissions: An Empirical Study Based on the Fixed-Effect Panel Quantile Regression Model

Chao-Qun Ma, Jiang-Long Liu, Yi-Shuai Ren and Yong Jiang
Additional contact information
Chao-Qun Ma: Business School, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China
Jiang-Long Liu: Business School, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China
Yi-Shuai Ren: Business School, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China
Yong Jiang: School of Finance, Nanjing Audit University, Nanjing 211815, China

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 24, 1-16

Abstract: Since the reform and opening-up, China’s CO 2 emissions have increased dramatically, and it has become the world’s largest CO 2 emission and primary energy consumption country. The manufacturing industry is one of the biggest contributors to CO 2 emission, and determining the drivers of CO 2 emissions are essential for effective environmental policy. China is also a vast transition economy with great regional differences. Therefore, based on the data of China’s provincial panel from 2000 to 2013 and the improved STIRPAT model, this paper studies the impact of economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI) and energy intensity on China’s manufacturing carbon emissions through the fixed-effect panel quantile regression model. The results show that the effects of economic growth, FDI and energy intensity on carbon emissions of the manufacturing industry are different in different levels and regions, and they have apparent heterogeneity. In particular, economic growth plays a decisive role in the CO 2 emissions of the manufacturing industry. Economic growth has a positive impact on the carbon emissions of the manufacturing industry; specifically, a higher impact on high carbon emission provinces. Besides, FDI has a significant positive effect on the upper emission provinces of the manufacturing industry, which proves that there is a pollution paradise hypothesis in China’s manufacturing industry, but no halo effect hypothesis. The reduction of energy intensity does not have a positive effect on the reduction of carbon emissions. The higher impact of the energy intensity of upper emission provinces on carbon emissions from their manufacturing industry, shows that there is an energy rebound effect in China’s manufacturing industry. Finally, our study confirms that China’s manufacturing industry has considerable space for emission reduction. The results also provide policy recommendations for policymakers.

Keywords: carbon emission; economic growth; energy intensity; FDI; panel quantile regression; China’s manufacturing industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/24/4800/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/24/4800/ (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:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:24:p:4800-:d:298656

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

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