Has environmental regulation improved the international competitiveness of Chinese cities?

ABSTRACT

Based on the instrumental variable method and a fixed-effects model, this paper uses panel data from 283 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2016 to analyse the impact of environmental regulation on the international competitiveness of China. The results suggest that (1) the strengthening of environmental regulation hinders the international competitiveness of Chinese cities; (2) technological innovation, resource allocation and government intervention all have partial mediating effects between the intensity of environmental regulation and the international competitiveness of Chinese cities. Nevertheless, if reasonable environmental policies can be formulated to enable the organic coordination of technological innovation, resource allocation and government intervention, it is possible to achieve a win-win situation between environmental regulation and the international competitiveness of Chinese cities.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental regulation
• international competitiveness
• technological innovation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 72064014.