Helping Hand & Grabbing Hand and Regional Environmental Pollution

This paper, based on a new theory of taxing power centralization, proposes two hypotheses for verifying and explaining the impacting effects of grabbing hand and helping hand governance model upon regional environment. By building and using panel data for each province, the paper finds by empirical analysis: first, in the regression of proxy variable with three industrial wastes as environmental pollutants, the grabbing hand of the central government has a significant negative impact upon regional environment, the helping hand of the central government does not have a significant impact upon regional environment, but it has a strong inhibitory effect upon the negative effect of central government's grabbing hand. Second, the negative effect of grabbing hand has a remarkable regional heterogeneity. The grabbing hand has a stronger negative effect upon the environment in regions of net outflow for tax revenue. Finally, the paper proposes relevant policy recommendations from three aspects for the purpose to optimize grabbing hand and helping hand governance model and improve regional environmental quality.