The Effects of Environmental Regulation on Investment Efficiency—An Empirical Analysis of Manufacturing Firms in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region, China

The Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region is China’s most important urban economic group. The specific structure of the region’s manufacturing industry causes enterprises to face the problem of low investment efficiency. How to balance high efficiency investment with the development of the ecological environment, achieving a win–win situation, is an urgent problem. In order to explore the impact of environmental regulation on the investment efficiency of listed manufacturing enterprises in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, this study utilized environmental regulation and enterprise-level data from 2011 to 2017, established a panel regression model, and then tested the impact mechanism of environmental regulation on corporate investment efficiency. On this basis, the panel threshold model was established to test the existence of the threshold effect of environmental regulation. The empirical results show that environmental regulation will have a negative impact on the investment efficiency of the listed manufacturing companies in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, causing the threshold of the impact of environmental regulation on investment efficiency to move from promotion to suppression. Finally, in accordance with the different scopes of the environmental regulation intensity of each manufacturing industry, the paper proposes reasonable suggestions for government departments in order to formulate environmental policies to improve the efficiency of enterprise investment