Coping with Externally Imposed Energy Constraints: Competitiveness and Operational Impact of China’s Top-1000 Energy-Consuming Enterprises Program
研究中国千家企业节能计划如何影响企业运营和盈利，发现受管制企业利润下降三分之一，主要因生产成本上升，且生产增长放缓，可能引发碳泄漏问题。
Global climate change has caused governments worldwide to take actions to improve their energy efficiency. This paper investigates how China’s Top-1000 program, a command-and-control type of energy-saving mandate, has affected the operational choices of firms, and in turn, their profitability. We apply the propensity score matching method to find “identical twins” for the participants in the Top-1000 program, then conduct a difference-in-differences analysis on the matched sample. Our findings suggest that the profitability of the enterprises targeted for energy savings decreased by one-third, mainly due to increased production costs. The targeted enterprises tended to increase their fixed assets per capita, which was associated with improvements in energy efficiency. Furthermore, compared to similar untargeted enterprises, there was a significant slowdown in the production growths of the targeted enterprises, raising concerns about carbon leakage due to increased production by less efficient producers.