（英文版）
关键词：环境经济；城市与环境；Industrial pollution, economic transition, SO2 emission, industrial dust, China
作者：Canfei He; Fenghua Pan; Yan Yan
发表时间：2011-01-07
概要：
China has received constant attention for both its remarkable growing economy and its serious environmental degradation. Economic transition has posed a serious contradiction for environmental protection efforts in China. This study investigates the different environmental effects of the triple transition process of marketization, globalization and decentralization using data on industrial SO2 emission and dusts at the city level in China. Overall, China’s industrial production has been cleaner and pollution intensive industries have become increasingly pollution effective. Panel data regression results confirm the EKC effect in Chinese cities. There is weak evidence to show that economic liberalization has improved environment quality. Dominance of SOEs however has degraded China’s environment. No evidence is found to support the pollution heaven hypothesis. Participation in economic globalization in turn is largely beneficial to environment. Decentralization has induced the race to the bottom competition by lowering environmental regulations to attract taxable and high value added pollution intensive industries. There however remain significant regional differences in the environmental effects of economic transition. The results imply that the institutional perspective provide an important angel to understand the issue of environmental degradation in China.
