关键词: 环境规制, 命令控制型, 市场激励型, 收入不平等

Abstract: This research extends the economic and social impacts of environmental regulation to the domain of income distribution and then carries out an empirical test based on the panel data of the provincial administrations in China. The results show that various environmental regulatory tools have distinct influences on the income distribution of urban residents: in general, command-and-control environmental regulatory tools have dramatically worsened the income inequality among urban residents, while the market-based environmental regulatory tools have a relatively small and inapparent influence on the income distribution of urban residents. From the perspective of different regions, the influence of command-and-control environmental regulatory tools' on the inequality of income distribution among urban residents in different regions presents a descending pattern in the order of “east, central, and west”, while no market-based environmental regulatory tools have dramatically worsened the income inequality in different regions. Based on the empirical test results, this research makes the following conclusions. First of all, there is a need to optimize the design of environmental regulatory tools and encourage government decision-makers to make use of the market means to increase space for independent decision-making by enterprises, thereby realizing the win-win goal between environmental governance and corporate development. Moreover, when using the command-and-control environmental regulatory tools, we need to make supporting policies to encourage the regulated enterprises to proceed with their technological upgrading and worker transformation, which may in turn lead to the nullification of the impacts of environmental regulation from exacerbating the inequality of the income distribution.

Key words: Environmental Regulation, Command-and-control, Market-based, Inequality of Income