The impact of low-carbon city pilot policy on green total-factor productivity in China's cities.

Whether the low-carbon city construction can coordinate urban economy and environment has attracted increasing attention in recent years. In this study, the impact of low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policy on urban green total-factor productivity is systematically examined theoretically and empirically. Specifically, the biennial Malmquist-Luenberger (BML) index is adopted to measure urban green productivity. Then, propensity score matching-difference-in-differences (PSM-DID) and spatial DID model are used to quantitatively identify the local and spatial spillover effect of the LCCP policy on urban green productivity during 2004-2018 in China. The results show that (1) The LCCP policy can significantly promote urban green productivity, as confirmed through a series of robustness tests. (2) For transmission mechanism, the LCCP policy can enhance urban green productivity through energy consumption reduction and technological innovation but not through industrial structure optimization. (3) With regard to heterogeneity, cities with better transportation infrastructure, stricter environmental regulation and higher urbanization level, as well as non-resource-based cities have more significantly positive effects of the LCCP policy on urban green productivity. (4) The LCCP policy mainly relies on technological progress rather than technical efficiency improvement to drive urban green productivity. (5) The LCCP policy's effect on urban green productivity has significant positive spatial spillover feature, which can significantly promote green productivity in both pilot cities and their neighboring cities. Our findings can provide valuable insights for low-carbon city construction to promote urban sustainable development in China.

Does high-speed rail improve China's urban environmental efficiency? Empirical evidence from a quasi-natural experiment.

Whether high-speed rail (HSR) can promote the coordination between the economy and environment is a critical issue that needs to be investigated. We used balanced panel data of 281 prefecture-level or above cities in China from 2005 to 2017 to consider the opening of HSR as a quasi-natural experiment. We integrated the difference-in-differences (DID) model, the spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model, and social network analysis (SNA) to empirically investigate the impact of HSR on urban environmental efficiency (UEE). The results showed that HSR significantly improved UEE by 4.6% annually during the study period, although the effect of HSR on UEE exhibited a time lag and varied dramatically in different cities. An analysis of the mechanism showed that the effect of technological innovation and the structural effect brought by the opening of HSR were the main contributors to the improved UEE. Further analysis showed that HSR service centrality also significantly improved UEE and HSR opening and HSR service centrality both had positive spatial spillover effects on the UEE of neighboring cities. Several policy implications are proposed accordingly to make full use of the advantages of HSR to improve UEE for China.

Government intervention, market development, and pollution emission efficiency: Evidence from China.

The government and the market are the two main means for resource allocation, and both play important roles in economic development and environmental protection. Based on the theoretical mechanism analysis, this study empirically investigated the relationship between government intervention, market development, and China's provincial pollution emission efficiency by using the static panel OLS, system generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM), and panel threshold effect model during the period 2000-2017. The results show that the impact of government intervention on China's provincial pollution emission efficiency shows a non-linear U-shaped curve relationship, and there is a positive correlation between market development and provincial pollution emission efficiency in China. Government intervention and market development are complementary, rather than a substitute for each other, in promoting China's provincial pollution emission efficiency. When government intervention is set as the threshold variable, the impact of government intervention on China's provincial pollution emission efficiency shows the feature of "promotes first, then inhibits." However, when market development is set as the threshold variable, government intervention is only conducive to the improvement of China's provincial pollution emission efficiency at a moderate marketization level. Lastly, some policy implications related to the government and the market in enhancing China's provincial pollution emission efficiency are presented.