Research on the Path of Carbon Trading Policies Affecting Industrial Structure Upgrading

Carbon trading, as a market-based carbon emission management tool, has grad-ually been widely used in most regions of China. In order to effectively re-spond to the challenge of climate change, many countries and regions have be-gun to explore and implement carbon trading policies. This study is based on panel da-ta of 31 provincial-level regions from 2005 to 2023. A multi-temporal double difference model is used to assess how carbon trading policy affects re-gional industrial structure upgrading. The results show that the carbon trading policy significantly upgrades the level of industrial structure in the pilot regions, and this conclusion still holds after the robustness test. Moreover, the mecha-nism analysis shows that the policy promotes regional industrial structure up-grading by improving the resource allocation efficiency and R&D investment in each region. The moderating effect shows that government intervention plays a posi-tive moderating role in the carbon trading policy on industrial structure up-grading. The results of the heterogeneity analysis show that the promotion effect of the carbon emissions trading pilot policy on the industrial structure level of the low level of trade capacity and the eastern and western regions is more sig-nificant and more effective in playing the role of the policy.