27 Oct, Tue, 16:10-17:40

林发勤 Lin, Faqin

中国农业大学 

China Agricultural University

Environmental Regulation and Inward Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence from the Eleven Five-Year Plan in China

Abstract:

This paper investigates whether environmental regulations affect inward foreign direct investment. The identification uses the reduction target policy for air pollutants during 11th Five Year Plan period implemented by the Chinese government in 2006. Our difference-in-difference-in-differences estimation explores three-dimension variations; specifically, prefecture (i.e., high target prefectures versus low target prefectures), industry (more polluting industries relative to less polluting ones), and year (i.e., before and after 2005). We find that tougher environmental regulations lead to less inward foreign direct investment (FDI) through increasing the probability of exit and reducing the probability of entry of foreign invested enterprises. Mechanism analysis shows that foreign invested enterprises with relatively low productivity demonstrate strong negative response. This allocation of resource improves industry productivity.