Description:
With the emergence of pollution problems and the deepening of economic globalization, the interaction between environmental policies and international trade has attracted increasing attention. This study explores the influence and mechanism of environmental regulation on the clean product exports of firms from the dual perspectives of expansion and intensive margins using matched micro data. According to the benchmark regression, environmental regulations improve the export intensity of clean products, but their impact on the export probability of clean products is not significant. That is, environmental regulations promote the intensive margin of enterprise clean product exports but do not promote the expansion margin of enterprise clean product exports. The mechanism analysis shows that production cost and emission reduction equipment investment are important channels through which environmental regulations can promote the cleanliness of export enterprises; however, the channels of technological innovation have not been verified. The expansion analysis shows that compared with command-and-control and voluntary public policy tools, market-inspired environmental regulation has a stronger promoting effect on the cleanliness of export enterprises. This study provides microevidence and a policy basis for the improvement of the environmental policy system and the sustainable development of international trade