Fiscal Policies to Promote Ecological Innovation: A Literature Review
Zhang Bingbing1, Shen Manhong2
1.School of Public Finance and Taxation, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou 310012, China 2.Institute of Ecological Civilization, Zhejiang A & F University, Hangzhou 311300, China
Abstract：Ecological innovation is an effective carrier of the construction of ecological civilization in the new era and a basic path to achieving high-quality economic development. The concept of “ecological innovation” has been in existence around 25 years. Since the “Porter Hypothesis” was put forward, the innovative utility of fiscal policies as a market incentive means in environmental regulation has attracted extensive attention. A review of relevant literature can help find a valuable breakthrough at the research level and provide a guiding research support at the practical level.In this paper, we attempt to clarify the connotation of ecological innovation, sort out the development context of ecological innovation, and analyze the mechanism of how fiscal policies promote ecological innovation in detail. Then we summarize the performance of fiscal policies promoting ecological innovation in three aspects: single fiscal policies’ effects, policy synergy, and regional synergy. The review shows that although the definition of the connotation of ecological innovation is not unified in the literature, its role in promoting green development, circular development and low-carbon development is widely recognized. Ecological innovation has “dual externalities”, which results in the lack of motivation for ecological innovations on the part of the economic subject. Therefore, the push-pull effect of supervision and the effect of institution and policy are very important for ecological innovations. Fiscal policies are an important means to stimulate the enthusiasm for ecological innovations.Previous studies focused on the mechanism interpretation and performance evaluation of various fiscal policies promoting ecological innovation. There was a lack of in-depth discussions on the relationship among policies, such as substitution or complementarity, and more emphasis on qualitative analysis than effective quantitative analysis. In future researches, we need, firstly, to focus on the field of regional ecological innovation, clarify the relationship among governments, enterprises, consumers and other subjects, explore a hybrid mechanism for the effective integration of government mechanism and market mechanism, and solve the contradictions and conflicts between the policies issued by the central government and local governments, between local governments and departments of local governments. Secondly, expand the research on performance evaluation of fiscal policies promoting ecological innovation, build up effective performance evaluation systems, break through the “performance causal chain” of “fiscal policies→ecological innovation→ecological economy”, break the limitations of qualitative analysis in previous researches, and introduce econometric and system dynamics simulation methods to effectively evaluate practical performances. Thirdly, break through the policy setting mode of afterwards compensation in practice and the piecemeal mode of single policy application, build up a fiscal policy system to promote ecological innovation, considering the synergy among fiscal policies and among regions, and finally promote the coordinated promotion of economic development, technological innovation and ecological environment protection.
2022, Vol. 52 
