Environmental regulation, industrial agglomeration, and marine green development efficiency: an empirical analysis from China's coastal provinces.

Environmental regulation (ER) and industrial agglomeration (IA) are important factors that affect green development efficiency (GDE). However, there is a lack of studies on their relation in the context of the marine economy. This paper integrates ER, IA, and marine GDE (MGDE) into a unified analytical framework and uses balanced panel data from China's 11 coastal provinces during 2008-2019 to quantify the linear, nonlinear, and spatial spillover effects between the three using the spatial Durbin model (SDM) and threshold effect model. The results show that ER has a negative impact on local and surrounding MGDE through the direct and spatial spillover effects. IA has a positive impact on local and surrounding MGDE through direct and spatial spillover effects. The synergistic impact of ER and IA can significantly boost local and surrounding MGDE. When ER surpasses a certain threshold, it amplifies the positive impact of IA on MGDE. These findings offer theoretical and practical references for the Chinese government to formulate marine environmental governance and industrial development policies.

Fiscal decentralization, industrial structure upgrading, and carbon emissions: evidence from China.

The debate over the role of fiscal decentralization and industrial structure upgrading in China's environmental governance has received increasing attention. Based on China's provincial panel data from 2003 to 2019, this paper investigates the impact of fiscal decentralization and industrial structure upgrading on carbon emissions to provide empirical evidence for the above theoretical argument. The results show that fiscal decentralization and industrial structure upgrading are negatively correlated with carbon emissions, while the interaction term for fiscal decentralization with industrial structure upgrading presents a facilitating effect on carbon emissions. Besides, fiscal decentralization, industrial structure upgrading, and the interaction term have significant regional heterogeneity on carbon emissions. When fiscal decentralization and industrial structure upgrading are taken as threshold variables, the effects of industrial structure upgrading and fiscal decentralization are significantly nonlinear. Moreover, environmental regulation, transportation infrastructure, and carbon emissions are positively correlated. There exists an inverted U-shaped relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth, which proves environmental Kuznets curve theorem. However, FDI and urbanization have no significant effect on carbon emissions. According to the above conclusions, it is necessary to strengthen the positive interaction between fiscal decentralization and industrial structure upgrading in mitigating carbon emissions, promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of China's economy, thus realizing the goals of "carbon peak" and "carbon neutrality."

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.

Relationship between FDI, fiscal expenditure and green total-factor productivity in China: From the perspective of spatial spillover.

Deeply investigating the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI), fiscal expenditure and green total-factor productivity (GTFP) is beneficial to formulating effective policies to promote the high-quality development in China. Based on theoretical mechanism analysis, with panel data of China's mainland 30 provinces during 2003-2017, this paper utilizes spatial econometric model to empirically explore the effects of FDI, fiscal expenditure and their interaction item on the growth of GTFP in China. The results show that FDI significantly promote the growth of the local and its neighboring GTFP, and both fiscal expenditure and the interaction between FDI and fiscal expenditure exert significantly negative effects on the growth of GTFP in the local and its neighboring regions. A series of robustness checks and the endogeneity test can ensure the reliability of these results. In addition, great heterogeneity can be found across China's different regions in the relationship between FDI, fiscal expenditure and GTFP. The conclusions suggest that it is necessary to give fully play to the synergy between FDI and fiscal expenditure and formulate regionally targeted policies to improve GTFP and promote high-quality development in 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.

Investigating the spatiotemporal differences and influencing factors of green water use efficiency of Yangtze River Economic Belt in China.

Combining freshwater consumption and wastewater emissions into a unified analysis framework and utilizing the epsilon-based measure (EBM) model with the characteristics of radial model and non-radial model, this paper evaluates green water use efficiency (GWUE) of 11 provincial-regions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) and investigates its spatiotemporal differences during the period 2005-2014, on basis of which the contribution rate of each input-specific green water use inefficiency in the overall green water use efficiency and the potential of freshwater-saving and wastewater emissions reduction are also calculated. The Theil index is used to explore the sources of the provincial gap of green water use inefficiency, and a random-effect panel Tobit model is applied to test the impact of the influencing factors of green water use inefficiency in the YREB. It is found that green water use inefficiency of the YREB is relatively low and regional differences is significant during the sample period, indicating a large potential of water-saving and water pollution reduction, and narrowing BGAP and WGAP of the Upstream is the key for improving green water use inefficiency in the YREB. The panel Tobit regression results show that economic development, technological innovation, water use structure, water resources endowment, environmental regulation and regional differences all play positive/negative effects on green water use inefficiency in the YREB, while these factors' influencing direction, degree and significance are significantly different. The conclusions of our study can provide considerably valuable information for the YREB to reserve water resources and reduce wastewater emissions.