Price bubbles in Beijing carbon market and environmental policy announcement

Abstract

This paper examines price bubbles in the relatively new carbon emission trading scheme of Beijing carbon market by employing a recently proposed econometric test which can stamp the occurrence and burst of financial bubbles. We find multiple bubbles in Beijing carbon market over the sample period between January 2014 to April 2018, and that the occurrences of carbon price bubbles are closely related to the announcements of environmental policies by the Chinese government. Comparing our results to the EU ETS, we find that the volatility of carbon price in Beijing market is higher than EU, and interestingly, the bubbles in Beijing market occur when the price volatility is relatively low, while in EU market the bubbles correspond to the peaks of volatility. Our empirical results provide insightful policy implications in the context of the actual China’s carbon market reform. To achieve effective stabilization of carbon price, policymakers should publicize alert notifications of the price fluctuations, and strengthen the carbon markets supervision and promote its improvement.