DEVELOPMENT STATUS AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT EVALUATION OF CHINA'S GREEN FINANCE

Green finance is a financial activity for supporting environmental improvement, for tackling climate change and for conserving and efficiently utilizing resources, which is also a requirement for sustainable economic development. Existing researches on the green finance policies and policy systems are still in their infancy, which are predominantly qualitative analyses, while empirical studies concerning the green finance policies are scarce. This paper combs the development course of China's green finance, and then evaluates the effectiveness of carbon emissions trading pilot programs through robust regression. The results reveal that China's total carbon emissions are still on the rise, though the emission intensity is declining by years. The carbon emission intensity is lower in the pilot areas with relatively developed economy, where the carbon emissions trading pilot programs are obviously effective in reducing the carbon emissions. Referring to the control variables, the increase of foreign direct investment (FDI) and technology progress (TE) both reduce the intensity of carbon emissions, while the increase of per capita GDP will lead to the deterioration of the environment; Environmental support effort (ENVI) has not yet played a role in slowing down environmental pollution. Thus, China's current green finance policy system should strengthen the reform of policy guarantee and market operation, which has certain reference value for further improving the policy system and promoting the development of green finance.