Search Results (5)

Against the global backdrop of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, renewable energy subsidy policies worldwide are shifting from universal, tariff-based schemes toward targeted, market-oriented mechanisms. However, existing research remains divided on the incentive effects of subsidies on firm investment and the risk of resource misallocation, and few studies have established a clear micro-macro linkage between firm-level subsidy receipts and regional employment and growth outcomes. Taking China’s 2016 renewable energy subsidy reform—characterized by competitive project bidding and green certificate trading—as a quasi-natural experiment, this study constructs a two-layer panel dataset covering 286 A-share listed renewable energy firms (2010–2023, 2412 firm-year observations) and 30 provincial-level regions in China (2010–2023, 420 region-year observations). Employing difference-in-differences (DID), triple difference-in-differences (DDD), mediation effect models, and threshold regression, combined with instrumental variables and placebo tests to address endogeneity, we empirically examine how subsidy policies transmit from firm behavior to regional employment and economic growth. The results indicate that the 2016 reform significantly boosted regional employment (elasticity = 0.035, p < 0.01) and economic growth (elasticity = 0.031, p < 0.05) in treated provinces. At the firm level, subsidy intensity exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with investment efficiency, with an estimated inflection point at 8.3% of operating revenue within the sample. Mechanism analysis shows that easing financing constraints, stimulating technological innovation, and reducing operational risk serve as core transmission channels, with the strongest contribution from financing constraint alleviation. Heterogeneity analysis further finds larger effects for private firms, high-tech enterprises, and coastal regions. This study develops a nonlinear analytical framework of “subsidy intensity–firm behavior–regional outcomes”, identifies context-specific boundaries of subsidy effectiveness, and provides integrated micro-macro empirical evidence for optimizing subsidy policies and advancing the global energy transition. Full article

Green agriculture is the future of agricultural development. However, there has been little attention paid to the relationship between market-oriented reform of agricultural subsidies and green agricultural development. Based on the quasi-natural experiment of China’s maize purchasing and storage policy reform (MPSR), this paper studied the impact of agricultural subsidy market-oriented reform on agricultural green development from the perspective of green total factor productivity using the difference-in-difference model. The results showed that the green total factor productivity (MGTFP) of maize in China from 2010 to 2020 presented an upward trend with an average annual growth rate of 0.70%, which mainly depended on the contribution of green technical progress in maize. MPSR could promote the improvement of MGTFP, but the result had a hysteresis effect. In addition, MPSR had a significant promoting effect on green technical change but had no significant impact on green technical efficiency. The policy implication of this paper is that developing countries should actively promote the market-oriented reform of agricultural subsidies to promote green agricultural development. Full article

Literature on the drivers of environmental technology has been increasing in recent years. However, few studies analyze the issue in developing countries. The main goals of understanding the drivers of, and obstacles to the ecological decisions made by firms, are to design efficient environmental regulatory instruments to achieve the environmental targets. This article analyzes the determinants, including the effects of environmental regulations, of the environmental technology adoption and improvement of environmental performance in the olive oil industry in managing the olive mills wastewater (OMWW). To meet our research objective, we applied a two-stage Heckman probit model to the data collected from 156 olive oil producers in three Moroccan provinces known by a high concentration of olive oil production activity. Our results showed that the environmental regulation is one main determinant of the adoption of environmental technology by olive oil producers. However, our findings indicate that the environmental regulation, as currently designed, is not strict enough to encourage producers to improve their environmental performance in the developmental context of this particular country. The conclusions of this research also suggest that the environmental performance of oil mills, while not explained by the severity of the environmental regulation, are influenced by other external and internal factors. On the one hand, the influence of the external environment of firms via the effect of external collaboration and international market orientation, and, on the other hand by internal factors related to environmental awareness of the producer and the firm’s technical competency. In the light of our findings, we recommend to the policy makers to carry out a reform of the regulatory measures through: (i) the implementation of the current legislation, (ii) designing an effective incentive system, combining better targeted green subsidy with an optimal tax on industrial wastewater discharge (iii) setting up programs to raise awareness and reinforce technical capacities. Full article

In 2007, China started the market reform of industrial land, with the aim of establishing a more effective industrial land market and promoting the effective allocation of land. For this study, we want to explore what strategic choices local governments and enterprises will make under the background of market-oriented reform, and whether there are still some implicit land price subsidies. In this context, based on matching micro land transfer data (2007–2013), we examined the policy effect in the seven years since the reform. Then, we further analyzed the land transfer strategies of local governments and the differences they made to enterprises’ land purchasing decisions against the background of the reform. The following were found: ① With the deepening of market reform, the effect has gradually become clear. The proportion of industrial land transferred through market modes increases year by year. Furthermore, due to marketization, the price of industrial land has increased significantly, and land purchases among enterprises have become more competitive. ② Against the background of the reform, local governments tend to adopt listing as an alternative to negotiation, so as to attract investment from preferred enterprises. ③ Local governments tend to give state-owned and large or medium enterprises more subsidies by way of listing, which reduces the land purchase price for these enterprises. Based on the results, the market-oriented reform of land should be adhered to, and the selection mechanism of tender, auction, and listing transfer methods should be further standardized and refined. Besides, a variety of ways to meet the needs of enterprises for land use (such as lease first and then transfer) should be proposed to compensate for the existing insufficiency. Full article

Renewable energy (RE) is one of the most popular public policy orientations worldwide. Compared to some other countries and continents, Europe has gained an early awareness of energy and environmental problems in general. At the theoretical level, free-market environmentalism indicates that based on the principle of private property rights, with fewer state interventionist and regulation policies, entrepreneurs, as the driving force of the market economy, can provide better services to meet the necessity of offering RE to protect the environment more effectively. Previous studies have revealed that Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom have made some progress in using the market to develop RE. However, this research did not analyze the three countries’ RE conditions from the perspective of free-market environmentalism. Based on our review of the principles of free-market environmentalism, this paper originally provides an empirical study of how Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom have partly conducted free-market-oriented policies to successfully achieve their policy goal of RE since the 1990s on a practical level. In particular, compared with Germany and Denmark, the UK has maintained a relatively low energy tax rate and opted for more pro-market measures since the Hayekian-Thatcherism free-market reform of 1979. The paper also discovers that Fredrich A. Hayek’s theories have strongly impacted its energy liberalization reform agenda since then. Low taxes on the energy industry and electricity have alleviated the burden on the electricity enterprises and consumers in the UK. Moreover, the empirical results above show that the energy enterprises play essential roles in providing better and more affordable RE for household and industrial users in the three sampled countries. Based on the above results, the paper also warns that state intervention policies such as taxation, state subsidies, and industrial access restrictions can impede these three countries’ RE targets. Additionally, our research provides reform agendas and policy suggestions to policymakers on the importance of implementing free-market environmentalism to provide more efficient RE in the post-COVID-19 era. Full article