The Impact of Carbon Emissions Trading on Exporters’ High-Quality Development -- Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

Abstract

In this paper, we test whether the carbon emissions trading system can generate the “Porter effect” and thus affect the total factor productivity of enterprises in a quasi-natural experiment based on the carbon emissions trading policy piloted in China since 2011. Using the data of listed companies with export business in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2008 to 2019, an asymptotic double difference model is used to test the effect of the carbon emissions trading policy by comparing the total factor productivity levels of exporting enterprises before and after the implementation of the policy. It is found that the implementation of carbon emissions trading policy contributes to the high-quality development of exporting firms, and the findings still hold after a series of robustness tests such as mitigating endogeneity and overcoming the selectivity bias of the sample.