Can Low-Carbon Transition Impact the High-Quality Development of the Manufacturing Industry?—Experience Evidence from a Low-Carbon Pilot Policy

Low-carbon transition is a wide-ranging and deep economic and social transformation. Can we enhance high-quality development of the manufacturing industry (HQDM) during the low-carbon transition process? The enactment of the low-carbon city pilot policy (LCCP) is considered a “quasinatural experiment”. This study initially constructs a theoretical model of the impact of the policy on the high-quality development of a company. A staggered DID approach is then employed to evaluate this impact, using microdata from listed manufacturing enterprises from 2003 to 2021, and a variety of robustness tests, such as PSM-DID and the double machine learning method, are also employed. The main results show that the LCCP led to a significant 9.8% increase in the TFP of the manufacturing industry in the pilot regions. Therefore, the LCCP promoted the HQDM. The impact of the policy has demonstrated a year-by-year upward trend. The influence mechanism test demonstrates that the LCCP resulted in a 14.3% improvement in resource allocation within the manufacturing of the pilot regions but led to a 0.3% decrease in technological innovation. In addition, the LCCP has been more effective in promoting the HQDM in western regions, along with in state-owned enterprises and low-technology manufacturing industries. This paper offers valuable insights into the implementation of differentiated low-carbon policies for manufacturing industries in different regions with different characteristics.