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Reasonable risk-taking is an important prerequisite for corporate green transformation. How environmental regulation policies affect corporate risk-taking is an issue worthy of discussion under the background of the development of economic and social green transformation. Based on a theoretical analysis of the effects of environmental regulations, this study used the data of China’ s A-share listed companies from 2004 to 2019 to empirically test the impact of environmental regulation policies on corporate risk-taking. The study found that: ① The strengthening of environmental regulations would significantly increase the level of corporate risk-taking. ② The mechanism test found that both the ‘dynamic effect’ of environmental regulations promoting technological progress and market competition efficiency and the ‘pressure effect’ aggravating enterprises’ production costs and the degree of enterprises’ shadow banking activities would lead to a rise in the level of corporate risk-taking. ③ The regional innovation environment and the cost transfer ability of enterprises significantly affected the policy effect of environmental regulations on improving corporate risk-taking. ④ Further re⁃ search showed that environmental regulations promoted corporate risk-taking, reduced the environmental performance of enterprises, and improved the default risk of enterprises, indicating that the negative effect brought by ‘pressure effect’ occupied a dominant position. This study has not only enriched the research on the effects of environmental regulation policies, but also expanded the research horizons of factors affecting corporate risk-taking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the impact of environmental regulation, an important measure promoting the construction of ecological civiliza⁃ tion, on green total factor productivity has increasingly become a hot spot. This article attemptd to consider the spatial effect in order to study the nonlinear spatio-temporal impact of investment-oriented environmental regulations dominated by government pollution control on green total factor productivity. Firstly, from the perspective of intra-regional and inter-regional interaction, it revealed the theoretical mechanism of investment-oriented environmental regulations affecting green total factor productivity and examined the characteristic facts of its nonlinear influence relationship. Secondly, based on the goal of green and low-carbon transformation, the non-radial SBM di⁃ rectional distance function method, including outputs such as carbon emissions and PM2.5, was used to measure the provincial-level green total factor productivity from 2001 to 2019 and to decompose the contributions of pure efficiency, technological progress, and scale efficiency. Thirdly, this article selected spatial econometric models based on the Queen adjacency weight matrix and the geograph⁃ ical distance weight matrix to analyze the nonlinear spatio-temporal impact of investment-oriented environmental regulations on green total factor productivity. The multi-threshold model was further used to test the regional impact mechanism of investment environmentaloriented regulation on green total factor productivity. The research results showed that: ① Compared to 2001-2011, the national green total factor productivity growth increased significantly from 2012 to 2019, and the regional gap in green total factor productivity had a narrowing overall trend. ② When considering spatial effects, there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between investment-oriented environmental regulations and green total factor productivity. This degree of influence had temporal and spatial heterogeneity, that is, the degree of inverted U-shaped influence was more prominent during 2001-2011 and in the central and western regions. It showed that the degree of inverted U-shaped influence was related to the effect of technological progress. ③ From the perspective of spatial spillover effects, green total factor productivity had significant spatial correlation characteristics, and investment-oriented environmen⁃ tal regulations at the national level had a significant positive spatial spillover effects on green total factor productivity. The spatial spill⁃ over effects of different periods and regions were heterogeneous. ④ When the energy consumption per unit GDP met a certain threshold condition, the improvement of investment-oriented environmental regulation could have a positive effect on green total factor productivi⁃ ty. Finally, countermeasures and suggestions are put forward from the aspects of comprehensive environmental regulation tools, con⁃ struction of regionally coordinated and efficient environmental regulation policies, exploration of cross-regional ecological compensation mechanisms, strengthening green technology transformation, and adjusting industrial structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]