Abstract

It is generally believed in the theoretical circles that the outbreak crisis of Chinese photovoltaic industry during the period of 2008-2012 is related to the improper industrial promotion policies of the government. However, the "Some Opinions on Promoting the healthy development of photovoltaic industry" issued by The State Council in 2013 and a series of supporting measures subsequently effectively reversed the industry crisis. Does this mean that the government can improve the industrial regulation ability and promote the healthy development of the industry through "dry learning"? In order to answer this question, this paper analyzes the influence of a new round of industrial regulations on excessive investment and innovation input in the photovoltaic industry by using the differences-in-differences model of new energy automobile enterprises as the control group. The results show that the improved supply-side regulation can significantly restrain industrial overinvestment and promote the innovation input of enterprises on the whole, but it also has some disadvantages, such as solving old problems and causing new problems, the overall cost of the industry is too high, and private enterprises are frustrated. When implementing deeply intervention-type industrial policies, the government still needs to make use of the market mechanism and hand over the investment initiative to enterprises, so as to keep the policies as smooth and predictable as possible.

Keywords

photovoltaic industry; Supply-side regulation; Over-investment; Innovation input; Differences-in-differences model;