Search

Air quality issues, especially haze pollution, have become an important aspect that threatens the sustainable development and health of human beings. Previous studies on the environmental effects of emissions trading system (ETS) mainly focused on carbon emission reduction, instead of focusing on the synergistic governance effect between carbon emission and PM 2.5 reduction. Based on the PSM-DID method and the World Development Index (WDI) database, this paper examines whether the EU ETS has a spillover effect on PM 2.5 damage reduction, and discusses the related impact mechanisms. The research results show that the EU ETS promotes the reduction of PM 2.5 damage, and in different phases of implementation, the impact of the EU ETS on the reduction of PM 2.5 damage has a dynamic effect. The robustness test results also show that the research conclusions of this paper are highly reliable. Finally, this paper gives relevant policy suggestions, which can encourage countries to achieve carbon emission reduction targets while helping to reduce PM 2.5 damage, and eventually achieve a win-win situation between economic growth and environmental improvement., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The coordinated development of environmental pollution and the economy has become a global problem. Emission trading scheme (ETS) has become a significant environmental policy instrument, prior studies primarily concentrated on micro-level factors with specific industries; there lacks discussion on the effects of ETS on macro-level industrial structure such as industrial structure upgrading. In this paper, we first use the propensity score matching (PSM) to screen out the control group in which countries are matched with the members of the EU, and then utilize the difference-in-differences (DID) method, to examine the effects of ETS implementation on national industrial structure upgrading in the members of the EU. Empirical results show that the EU ETS may does not have a significant impact on industrial structure change, while the implementation of EU ETS has significantly promoted the upgrading of the country's industrial structure, and the policy effect of EU ETS on industrial structure upgrading gradually increases as time goes by and there is a dynamic effect. The conclusions of this paper can be used as reference for the development of emission reduction policies in large countries with unbalanced internal development.