Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2023.2179509
Environmental regulation and sectoral disparity in labor demand: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China
Jin Guan
Dongwei He
Hanwen Zhang
Qigui Zhu
Abstract
The trade-off between environmental regulation and job creation
has been a dilemma for policymakers in the past decades.
Exploiting the enterprise-level sample data, we conduct a difference-
in-difference-in-differences (DDD) specification to estimate the
overall effect of China’s Two Control Zones (TCZ) policy on labor
demand, measured as the number of enterprise-level employees.
We find that the industrial enterprises in TCZ cities, where the TCZ
policy has been implemented after 1998, employed fewer workers
in more polluting industries. Furthermore, these employment
effects are very heterogeneous among different enterprise ownerships
and control zones. The TCZ policy significantly decreased the
labor demand in private enterprises or those located in the Acid
Rain Control Zones (ARCZ) but had little impact on their stateowned
and foreign-invested counterparts or those located in the
Sulfur Dioxide Pollution Control Zones (SPCZ).
Keywords
Environmental regulation; emission reduction; labor demand; DDD model
Hrčak ID:
306491
URI
Publication date:
31.3.2023.
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