Influences of environmental regulations on skill premium: mediating effect of industrial structure optimization
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Influences of environmental regulations on skill premium: mediating effect of industrial structure optimization Shu Kedong1 · Lu Yueyu1 · Yu Ziyan1 · Kuai Peng1 · Zhang Shu’an2 Received: 5 May 2020 / Accepted: 25 September 2020 © Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies and Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Environmental regulation could affect skill premium by affecting the relative supply and demand for skilled labor and non-skilled labor; meanwhile, it could also exert influences on skill premium indirectly by optimizing industrial structure. This essay conducts empirical tests based on the panel data of Chinese cities at prefecture level or above from 2005 to 2016 by analyzing the influence mechanism of environmental regulations on skill premium as well as the intermediate effect of industrial structure. The results show that generally environmental regulation has remarkable promoting effect on skill premium and the industrial structure shows significant positive mediating effect; however, the mediating effect of industrial structure shows regional heterogeneity, which is negative in the eastern and western regions and positive in the central region. The results of the research could provide a theoretical basis and decision-making references for China in reasonable control of skill premium and guaranteeing skilled labors. Keywords Environmental regulation · Industrial structure · Skilled labor · Nonskilled labor
* Kuai Peng [email protected] * Zhang Shu’an [email protected] 1
School of Economics of Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, Anhui, People’s Republic of China
2
Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance, Shanghai 201209, People’s Republic of China
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Environmental Economics and Policy Studies
1 Introduction At present, China’s economy has changed from the rapid growth stage to the high-quality development stage, and is in the crucial period of transforming the development mode, optimizing the economic structure, and switching the growth momentum. With the transformation of economic development mode, China attaches great importance to environmental protection, and has formulated a series of environmental and economic policies. These regulations have played a positive role in the continuous improvement of China’s environment, but also caused some discussions about its macroeconomic influence. For example, intuitively, people are worried that environmental regulation will increase production costs, weaken the competitive advantage and production scale of enterprises, and reduce the number of workers employed by enterprises, resulting in the imbalance of the labor market. Fortunately, a large number of studies have pointed out that environmental regulation may bring about positive employment effect. For example, Bezdek et al. (2008) pointed out that environmental regulation can increase the price of resource production factors, which makes enterprises more inclined to choose the labor factor for substitution. T
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