Page 39 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 2

STS452 Yang C. et al.
required to create unit economic benefits in export trade. This result
shows that the environmental cost of medium-sized firms in creating the
same value-added is the lowest.

4. Conclusion
This research constructed an extended China’s input-output table
distinguishing the firm heterogeneity by size to measure the specific role of
the different firms by size in China’s economy and environment. The results
show that small and medium-sized firms play a crucial role in promoting
China's economic development, of which the output and value-added
accounted for more than 60% in the industrial sector. As for the exports, large
firms composed about half of China's total exports, which is obviously to show
that large firms have certain advantages over small and medium firms of
exports. In terms of CO2 emissions, large firms contributed about 41.17% of
the industrial total emissions, acting as a dominant factor to the China’s carbon
emission in 2012.
The value-added ratio of medium-sized firms reached 24.57%, which was
higher than large-sized firms and small-sized firms; and the value-added per
export of medium-sized firms was also higher than the other firm size types,
reaching 0.78. This investigates that in China's foreign trade, the value-added
created by per unit input of medium-sized firms in industrial sector is higher
than large-sized firms and small-sized firms. In particular, the value-added
ratio of large enterprises was the lowest among the three firm types, which is
closely related to the excessive intervention of local governments aiming to
stimulate the economic development. Therefore, it is necessary for the
government to carry out more reasonable taxation and investment policies, so
as to propel the financial market be more inclined to small and medium-sized
firms to help them solve the difficulty of financing. For the per export
embodied carbon emissions, small-sized firms had the highest per export
embodied carbon emissions, while large-sized firms had the lowest value-
added, which fully indicates that the export products structure of small-sized
firms is facing with optimizing and upgrading in the future. However, small
firms generally have difficulty in financing which is so hard for them to carry
out technological innovation or introduce environmental protection
technologies by themselves. Therefore, under this circumstance, it is
significant for the government to increase its support and issue some policies
in favor of the development of small-sized firms.

References
1. Ahmad, N., & Wyckoff, A. (2003). Carbon dioxide emissions embodied in
international trade of goods.

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