Place-Based Policies and Carbon Emission Efficiency: Quasi-Experiment in China’s Old Revolutionary Base Areas

Regional imbalance is a typical feature of economic and social development in China, and place-based policies aimed at promoting balanced regional development may bring challenges to low-carbon goals. This study uses the panel data of China’s prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2019 to investigate the impact of place-based policies on carbon emission efficiency using a quasi-experimental method. Results indicate that place-based policies significantly reduce the regional total-factor carbon emission efficiency. The difference-in-differences method based on propensity score matching and entropy balancing matching consistently supports the finding that carbon emission efficiency decreases after policy intervention. Place-based policies lead to a significant decline in capital allocation efficiency but have an insignificant impact on labor allocation efficiency. Moreover, place-based policies result in the expansion of carbon-intensive industries but hinder the progress of the financial technology of financial institutions. Nevertheless, place-based policies do not lead to the deterioration of environmental quality. Among the advantages of these policies are the significant promotion of regional digitization and increased fiscal expenditure on science and technology. Political promotion, carbon regulation, trade policies, and other conditional factors may be optimally designed to promote low-carbon development in the old revolutionary areas.