Can anti-corruption induce green technology innovation? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment of China

Green technology innovation shoulders the dual task of green development and innovation leading. It is an inevitable choice for China to achieve the carbon peak and neutrality goal and promote high-quality economic development by effectively stimulating green innovation vitality and improving green innovation capacity. In this context, from the perspective of institutional quality, this study takes the anti-corruption campaign launched since the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party as a quasi-natural experiment, constructs an intensity difference-in-differences (DID) model, and tests the impact effect and mechanism of the anti-corruption campaign on regional green technology innovation. It is found that the anti-corruption campaign has significantly improved the level of regional green technology innovation. This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests such as parallel trend test, placebo test, and instrumental variable estimation. The results of mechanism analysis show that the anti-corruption campaign is helpful to increase foreign direct investment and change the government's fiscal expenditure bias, thus promoting the improvement of green technology innovation level. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the promotion effect of anti-corruption campaign on green technology innovation is more significant in eastern and southern regions. At the same time, the lower the degree of government intervention, the greater the protection of intellectual property rights, and the stronger the environmental governance, the greater the promoting effect of the anti-corruption campaign on green technology innovation. Further research shows that the improvement of the level of green technology innovation is conducive to the realization of the "dual control" goal of total and intensity of carbon emissions. This study proves the positive externality of anti-corruption campaign from the perspective of green technology innovation and provides new empirical evidence for the advantageous theory of anti-corruption.