自工业革命以来，人类对自然资源的开发和利用不断加大，导致温室气体排放量过量增加，全球气候变化不断加剧。然而，气候环境问题具有负面效应，因此必须借助强有力的政府政策来有效解决。碳排放权交易市场是控制温室气体排放的重要市场导向型政策工具之一。中国政府于2011年启动了北京、天津、上海、重庆、湖北、广东及深圳七个试点碳市场。这七个试点市场在2013年和2014年相继启动，发布了碳市场管理方案，并公布了纳入企业名单。至今，自2013年试点碳市场启动交易以来，碳市场在中国已经发展了十年。本文探讨了碳市场能否在此期间发挥其作用，影响市场主要参与者——企业——的可持续发展行为。本文采用实证研究方法，从微观层面探究了试点碳市场政策是否影响企业环境、社会、治理（ESG）表现。所使用的企业财务数据来自于CSMAR数据库，企业ESG得分来自于Bloomberg数据库。本文以各试点碳市场开启年份为政策冲击点，以试点地区试点行业的企业为实验组，非试点地区对应行业的企业为对照组，使用多期双重差分模型对中国2011年至2016年A股上市企业进行了分析。核心结论是：试点碳市场政策能够显著提升企业ESG表现。本文进一步探讨了试点碳市场政策和企业ESG表现之间的因果关系，并讨论了其作用渠道。研究结果表明，碳市场政策可以引起企业对自身可持续发展的重视，从理念和制度上产生转变，并影响其实际绿色投资行为和对外宣传，从而全方位提升企业的ESG表现。此外，本文还对碳市场政策对企业ESG表现的作用异质性进行了检验。分组回归发现，在国企中，碳市场政策对企业ESG表现的作用是显著正向的；然而，在非国企中，其作用不显著。碳市场政策对经营效率较低的企业ESG表现具有正向作用，但不影响经营效率较高的企业。最后，基于研究结果，提出了三点政策建议：鼓励各国根据自身发展水平探索市场化减排政策；扩大中国试点地区和全国碳市场的行业覆盖范围；加强对企业可持续发展的能力建设。

Since the Industrial Revolution, humankind has increasingly exploited natural resources, resulting in excessive greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change. Strong government policies are needed to address these negative externalities of climate and environmental issues. The carbon emission trading market is an essential market-oriented policy tool for controlling greenhouse gas emissions. In 2011, the Chinese government announced the start of preparations for seven pilot carbon emission trading markets in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hubei, Guangdong, and Shenzhen. Seven pilot carbon markets began trading in 2013 and 2014, with carbon market management plans introduced and the list of included enterprises announced. Since then, the carbon emission trading market has been developing for ten years in China, and this study explores whether it can influence the sustainable development behavior of leading market participants - enterprises.This thesis empirically investigates whether the pilot carbon emission trading policy affects corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance at the micro level, using corporate financial data from the CSMAR database and corporate ESG scores from the Bloomberg database. The study takes the opening year of each pilot carbon market as the policy impact point, with firms in pilot industries in pilot areas as the experimental group and enterprises in corresponding industries in non-pilot areas as the control group. Using the multi-period DID model to analyze China‘s listed enterprises from 2011 to 2016, the thesis draws the core conclusion that the pilot carbon market policy can significantly improve the ESG performance of enterprises.Additionally, the thesis discusses the channels of causality between pilot carbon market policies and corporate ESG performance. The results show that the carbon emission trading policy causes companies to pay more attention to sustainable development, leading to a change in corporate philosophy and system management, influencing their green investment behavior and external communication, and thus improving their ESG performance. Furthermore, this thesis examines the heterogeneity of the effect of carbon emission trading policy on corporate ESG performance. The impact of carbon market policy on ESG performance is found to be significantly positive among SOEs but not among non-SOEs. The policy also has a positive effect on the ESG performance of firms with poor operating efficiency but does not affect firms with high operating efficiency.Finally, based on the research results of this study, three policy suggestions are put forward: to encourage all countries to explore market-oriented emission reduction policies according to their development level; to expand the industry coverage of China‘s pilot carbon markets and the national carbon market launched in 2021; and to build the capacity for sustainable development of enterprises.