Recently, the Office of the Award Committee of the Liu Shibai Economics Prize publicly announced the results of the seventh Liu Shibai Economics Prize selection, with the public notice period from October 28 to November 3, 2024 (a total of 7 days). Following qualification review, expert correspondence review, panel review, and approval by the award committee, a total of 10 proposed award-winning achievements were selected for the seventh Liu Shibai Economics Prize. The paper Binding Carbon Emission Reduction and Employment: An Examination Based on Firm-Level and Regional Labor Changes by Professor Zhou Yahong of the School of Economics, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, was selected.
Abstract
Based on firm-level environmental regulation intensity, this paper uses data from the Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database and the China City Statistical Yearbook to investigate the impact of the "Ten Thousand Enterprises Energy Conservation and Low-Carbon Action" on employment. The study finds that as carbon reduction intensity increases, compared with non-targeted enterprises, the policy causes employment in the ten thousand targeted enterprises to decline significantly through the "scale effect," "factor substitution effect," and "technology effect," indicating that the policy reduces employment in polluting firms. However, city-level analysis finds that the policy has a significant positive impact on total urban industrial enterprise employment, demonstrating job creation at the city level. Further exploration of labor reallocation effects to explain the discrepancy between firm-level and city-level employment effects reveals that at the firm level, there is labor transfer from targeted enterprises to non-targeted enterprises, and at the industry level, employment is reallocated from more polluting industries to cleaner industries, indicating that regulation promotes industrial transformation and upgrading. In addition, after policy implementation, increased carbon reduction intensity did not cause firm employee compensation to decline, indicating that the environmental regulation did not lead firms to pass on the costs of emission reduction and pollution treatment in a way that caused losses in employee welfare. The findings of this paper can provide a reference for the cost-benefit analysis of China's environmental policies from the perspective of employment.
Author Biography
Zhou Yahong is a Distinguished Professor under the Ministry of Education's National Talent Program, a Shanghai Leading Talent, and a New Century Excellent Talent. His main research areas are quantitative economic theory and applications. He has published nearly 50 articles in authoritative domestic and international journals such as Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Econometric Theory, Economic Research Journal, China Economic Quarterly, Management World, and Journal of Management Sciences in China. His research topics are oriented toward major national needs. He has presided over and completed one National Natural Science Foundation Key Project, three General Projects, and one International Cooperation Project, and is currently undertaking one National Natural Science Foundation Key Project and one General Project. In the post-evaluation of completed projects, he has twice been rated as "Exceptionally Excellent."
