IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i3p1084-d727484.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Environmental Regulation and Firm Exports: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in China

Author

Listed:
  • Li Zhang

    (School of Management, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384, China)

  • Yuhai Liu

    (Laboratory for Economic Behaviors and Policy Simulation, College of Economic and Social Development, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China)

  • Jin-Li Hu

    (Institute of Business and Management, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei City 10044, Taiwan)

  • Tiebin Liu

    (Institute of Economics, School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China)

  • Sainan Liao

    (School of Economics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China)

Abstract

This research studies the impact of a unique environmental regulatory policy called mandatory Cleaner Production Audit on firm exports from China using matched firm-level data. Employing the difference-in-differences approach to examine this effect shows that firms subject to the mandatory Cleaner Production Audit suffer a relative decline in exports, and this negative effect is stronger when the implementation of mandatory Cleaner Production Audit was substantially improved in the later stage. Heterogeneity analyses present that the stringent environmental regulations barely affect state-owned firms, whereas they are a strong influence on private firms located in the eastern region of China, and have a much larger negative effect on exports of small-size firms relative to large-size firms. Mechanism discussions show that there are both the compliance costs effect and the innovation offsets effect, but the benefits from the innovation offsets effect do not appear to be large enough to outweigh the compliance costs effect for the regulated firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Li Zhang & Yuhai Liu & Jin-Li Hu & Tiebin Liu & Sainan Liao, 2022. "Environmental Regulation and Firm Exports: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-25, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1084-:d:727484
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1084/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1084/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhang, Bingbing & Wang, Ning & Yan, Zhijun & Sun, Chuanwang, 2023. "Does a mandatory cleaner production audit have a synergistic effect on reducing pollution and carbon emissions?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    2. Xu, Peng & Xu, Xiaomei & Bai, Guiyu, 2022. "Corporate environmental responsibility, CEO’s tenure and innovation legitimacy: Evidence from Chinese listed companies," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1084-:d:727484. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.