关键词: 环境规制, 绿色创新能力, 节能低碳, 双重差分

Abstract: By merging China Stock Market & Accounting Research Database and Chinese Patent Database, this paper takes China’ s Ten Thousand Enterprise Energy-saving and Low-carbon Program implemented in 2011 as a quasi-natural experiment to investigate the environmental regulation effect on firms’ green innovation capability. Empirical results show that this energy-saving and low-carbon policy significantly improves firms’ green innovation capability, and this result is robust to a series of robustness and exclusiveness checks. Moreover,the impact of the policy is heterogeneous: the positive impact is more profound in eastern and central regions, skill-intensive sectors, large firms as well as firms during a mature stage, with no significant difference between state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises. Our extended analysis shows the innovation compensation effects induced by the energy-saving and low-carbon policy are higher than the abatement cost effects, which explains the theoretical mechanism of environmental regulation promoting green innovation. Our research provides an important policy implication on how to utilize environmental policies to promote the green innovation capability of firms.

Key words: Environmental Regulation, Green Innovation Capability, Energy-saving and Low-carbon, Difference-in-difference Method