Higher education expansion and emission trading scheme: A case study in China

Despite the abundant empirical evidence of higher education impacting emission mitigation, few studies have uncovered the mechanism that higher education affects climate policy. In this paper, we attempt to narrow the aforementioned research gap by employing a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to quantify the relations between the higher education expansion (HEE) and emission trading scheme (ETS) in China. The CGE model results show that the HEE reduces labor employment, GDP, and emissions, whereas the ETS relieves these HEE impacts. Regardless of the HEE, the ETS causes emission abatement at the price of employment loss and GDP loss, whereas the HEE weakens the ETS effects on employment, GDP, and emissions. These findings imply that HEE negatively affects emission mitigation in climate policy implementation, whereas climate policy could be implemented to boost economic growth during college education expansion.