燃煤电厂脱硫电价补贴是我国利用经济手段促进环境保护的重要政策。本文利用2001—2010年地级市数据,基于双重差分方法,识别了脱硫补贴对SO_2减排的因果效应。补贴政策有效激励了燃煤电厂投运脱硫设施和SO_2减排。作为政策受益对象的燃煤电厂的数量每增加1个,城市SO_2去除率会提高0.832%,去除量会提高3.7%,排放量会降低1%。本文进行了一系列稳健性检验,并分析了政策异质影响。研究表明,设计激励相容的政策,是环境治理的有效途径。
Subsidy for coal-fired power plants which deploy sulfur dioxide scrubber is an important market-based policy to promote environmental protection.This paper identifies the causal relationship of the subsidy on SO_2 emission using the Difference-in-Difference methodology,utilizing the city level data from 2001 to 2010.It is found that the subsidy effectively stimulates power plants to install and operate sulfur dioxide scrubber,thus reduces SO_2 emission.A series of robustness checks and heterogeneous effect analysis are further provided.Our studies show that incentive compatible policy design is the key for pollution abatement.