AUTHOR=Sun Xiaoyang , Zheng Yuhua , Zhang Chenyu , Li Xuelian , Wang Baosheng 

TITLE=The Effect of China's Pilot Low-Carbon City Initiative on Enterprise Labor Structure

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Energy Research

VOLUME=Volume 9 - 2021

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/energy-research/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2021.821677

DOI=10.3389/fenrg.2021.821677

ISSN=2296-598X

ABSTRACT=Based on the background of China’s pilot low-carbon city initiative in 2010, 2012, and 2017, this paper captures the exogenous change of enterprise labor structure based on A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2019 in Shenzhen and Shanghai Stock Exchange. With the integration of macro data at the city level and micro data at the enterprise level, adopting the time-varying Difference-in-Difference (DID) model, we find that: 1) China’s pilot low-carbon city initiative can significantly promote the upgrading of enterprise labor structure. 2) China’s pilot low-carbon city initiative can significantly increase R&D investment of listed companies, suggesting that R&D investment is a channel for the impact of China’s pilot low-carbon city initiative on enterprise labor structure in the pilot cities. 3) The heterogeneity analysis shows that the labor structure of state-owned listed companies has been optimized significantly, while the labor structure of non-state-owned listed companies is not significant. Meanwhile, the labor structure of listed companies under high-quality government control has been optimized significantly, while the labor structure of listed companies under low-quality government control is not significant. Overall, our study shows that the pilot low-carbon city initiative has played a governance role in China and optimized enterprise labor structure.