Is the environment a victim of the economic downturn? Evidence from China’s manufacturing firms

摘要

This paper investigates whether pollution-intensive industries develop faster in a time ofeconomic downturn. Using firm-level panel data from 2005 to 2013, we find supportingempirical results in an analysis of China’s manufacturing industries in the 2008 economiccrisis. We find that pollution-intensive firms tended to produce more compared with nonpollution-intensive firms in the 2008 economic crisis, with the pre-crisis period as a baseline.We further find that this effect is more pronounced in areas with higher export dependenceand a smaller proportion of production from pollution-intensive industries. Therelatively faster production expansion in pollution-intensive industries is more evident forstate-owned enterprises.