国际经济贸易学院助理教授刘梦迪与南京大学环境管理与政策研究中心张炳教授、谭睿鹏博士的合作论文The Costs of "Blue Sky": Environmental Regulation, Technology Upgrading, and Labor Demand in China被国际一流经济学期刊Journal of Development Economics接受发表。

Abstract: To cope with the stricter environmental regulation, manufacturing firms need to carry out pollution reduction activities and change their optimal production decisions, which may affect their labor demand. Using a ten-year firm-level panel dataset （1998-2007）, we use an estimation technique pairing propensity score matching （PSM） with a difference-in-differences （DID） estimator to examine the impacts of a national air pollution control policy on employment in China. We find that China's Key Cities for Air Pollution Control （KCAPC） policy effectively lowered sulfur dioxide （SO2） emissions by approximately 26%. The new environmental regulation significantly reduced manufacturing labor demand by approximately 3%. Most importantly, firms reduce pollution emission mainly by upgrading production technology so the decline in labor is partly due to the increase in labor productivity brought about by technological progress. As a result of pollution reduction, low-skilled employees and workers in domestic manufacturing firms are more affected by environmental regulation in China.

环境保护的就业影响这一主题在西方发达国家受到广泛关注，但环境规制对就业的影响机制以及异质性就业影响尚未得到充分回答。论文针对中国大气污染防治重点城市政策，运用倾向得分匹配方法与双重差分方法从企业和城市两个尺度分析了环境规制对污染减排以及劳动力需求的影响。长期以来，基于自上而下的强制性环境目标的环境治理方式被认为是中国环境管理最主要的手段和最有效的途径。既两控区政策之后，为了进一步改善空气质量，环保部分别于1998年和2001年划定了47个和66个城市为第一批和第二批大气污染防治重点城市。研究发现大气污染防治重点城市政策有效降低了26%二氧化硫排放。更严格的环境规制使制造业劳动力需求降低了约为3%，这主要是因为企业更倾向于通过生产技术升级实现减排，而非末端治理。因此，环境规制对劳动力需求的负向影响主要由于技术进步的替代效应。进一步结合劳动生产率分析发现，环境规制通过促使企业生产技术升级提高了劳动生产率。此外，研究发现低技能劳动力和国内私营企业的工人受到了更大的影响。

刘梦迪博士2019年毕业于南京大学。主要研究领域为环境经济、环境治理、政策评估，研究成果发表在American Journal of Political Science、Journal of Development Economics、Journal of Environmental Economics and Management、Journal of Regulatory Economics等高水平国际期刊上。