The pollutant and carbon emissions reduction synergistic effect of green fiscal policy: Evidence from China

Green fiscal policy is an important tool for promoting environmental protection and low-carbon development.This paper adopts the "National Comprehensive Demonstration of Energy Saving and Emission Reduction Fiscal Policy" of China as a quasi-experiment and constructs a staggered DID model to explore the synergistic effect of green fiscal policy on the pollutant and carbon emissions reduction.The results indicate the following:(1) green fiscal policy can significantly reduce the pollutant and carbon emissions, and the effect is robust after a series of robustness tests;(2) green fiscal policy can contribute to environmental protection and low-carbon development primarily through weakening the local government's assessment of economic growth targets,stimulating industrial upgrading, and promoting green technology innovation;(3)Additionally, our results show that the synergistic effect is stronger in cities with low fiscal pressure and high inter-jurisdictional competition,and where local governments place a higher priority on environmental protection.