The other mountain’s stone can polish jade: intellectual property protection and firm pollution

This study provides novel evidence that intellectual property protection balances between economic growth and environmental governance. Exploiting the staggered introduction of national model cities for intellectual property from 2012, we find that intellectual property protection reduces firm pollution. Combining patent-pollution panel data, we find that green innovation is indeed the driving force behind our baseline results. Heterogeneity analysis shows that intellectual property protection effectively incentivizes private firms, larger firms, firms with stronger judicial protection, and polluting firms to reduce emissions. This provides an opportunity to balance economic growth with environmental governance and establish the scientific basis for intellectual property protection.