Greener together: The impact of China's mixed-ownership reform on firm carbon emissions

Abstract

This research delves into the impact of mixed-ownership reform on carbon dioxide emissions within State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), leveraging Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Difference-in-Difference (DID) estimation methodologies. The results gleaned from our study evince that the adoption of mixed-ownership reform in China's SOEs facilitates a notable reduction in carbon emissions. Our mechanism analysis elucidates that the substitution of clean energy plays a significant role in enabling mixed-ownership reform to foster corporate carbon emission reduction. Intriguingly, our evidence reveals that the influence of mixed-ownership reform is more pronounced in curtailing carbon emissions of large-scale enterprises. Conversely, this reform appears less effective in constraining the augmentation of carbon emissions in small and medium-sized enterprises. The robustness of our findings is further buttressed by the application of alternative matching methods and results derived from the placebo test.