Abstract: This paper uses 2002-2014 inter-provincial panel data to integrate regional corruption and foreign direct investment into the traditional EKC model to examine the impact of regional corruption and foreign direct investment on China′s carbon emissions, and tests the existence of the regional carbon emission Kuznets curve. The results show that there is regional heterogeneity in the impact of regional corruption on China′s carbon emissions, corruption increases carbon emissions by distorting resource allocation and relaxing environmental regulation at the national and inland levels; in coastal areas, however, regional corruption has shown no significant impact on carbon emissions; the entry of foreign direct investment reduces carbon emissions, which is result that the positive technical effect of FDI and the positive effect of the structure are larger than the negative effect of scale on FDI; there is no Kuznets curve for carbon emissions at the national and inland levels, and the Kuznets curve only exists in the coastal areas.

Key words: regional corruption, foreign direct investment, carbon emissions, Kuznets effect