Can technological finance cooperation pilot policy improve energy efficiency? Evidence from a quasi-experiment in China.

Whether the technological finance cooperation pilot (TFCP) policy in China can promote energy efficiency remains under investigated. Using the dataset covering 284 cities in China from 2003 to 2019, this paper adopts the Super-SBM model with undesirable outputs to measure energy efficiency. Based on this efficiency, the Difference-in-Differences model (DID) and Spatial Durbin model (SDM) are employed to discuss the impact of TFCP policy on energy efficiency. Results demonstrate that TFCP policy has significantly promoted energy efficiency. And the conclusion is still valid after the robustness checks and endogenous treatment has been carried out. The impact of the TFCP policy on energy efficiency is heterogeneous, depending on the geographical, administrative, and resource characteristics of cities. To be specific, the promotion effect tends to be pronounced in east-central cities, high-ranking cities, and high-tech cities. Moreover, TFCP policy could significantly improve energy efficiency through the effects of technological innovation, industrial upgrading, and financial development. A further policy spillover analysis shows that TFCP policy has exerted a remarkable incentive influence on energy efficiency locally, while the neighboring cities are inhibitive. To sum up, this research is of important theoretical value and policy-making reference on green economy transformation for cities with differential features and energy utilization capacity, by shedding light on the impacts of such a technological finance cooperation system on energy efficiency.

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.