Collaborative effect of the energy conservation and emission reduction fiscal policy in China.

Government-led national comprehensive demonstration cities for Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction Fiscal Policy (ECERFP) are pivotal for China in addressing environmental governance. Using a panel dataset covering 278 Chinese cities from 2003 to 2019, this study adopts the staggered difference-in-differences (DID) approach to investigate the synergistic impacts of ECERFP on pollution and carbon reduction. The findings indicate that ECERFP contributes to a 3% improvement in pollution reduction performance, a 1.5% enhancement in carbon reduction performance, and a 4% overall increase in combined pollution and carbon reduction efforts. Furthermore, the study examines the heterogeneous effects of ECERFP on environmental performance. ECERFP significantly influences the synergistic efforts in pollution and carbon reduction by fostering green innovation, enhancing energy allocation, and optimizing industrial structures. This study both theoretically and empirically outlines the specific pathways and mechanisms through which "incentive-based" green fiscal policy promotes synergistic pollution and carbon reduction, thus providing a pragmatic foundation for enhancing the role of fiscal policy in environmental governance.

Does industrial transfer policy mitigate carbon emissions? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China.

In this paper, we identify the causal effects of the industrial transfer policy (ITP) on carbon emissions. Specifically, we treat the demonstration zones of undertaking industrial transfer in China as a quasi-natural experiment and evaluation its carbon mitigation effects using the difference-in-differences (DID) and matching DID strategies. Our findings suggest that the ITP exerts a significant negative impact on carbon emissions. In particular, both the DID and matching DID estimates indicate that the ITP leads to mitigate carbon emissions by approximately 4.9 and 4.7 million tons, respectively. We also investigate the heterogeneous carbon mitigation effects of the ITP. Moreover, various checks and falsification tests are also presented to confirm the causal effects, including the placebo test, concurrent events test, alternative measures of the ITP and carbon emissions, alternative estimation method and matching technique. The results indicate that our key conclusion, the carbon mitigation effect of the ITP is robust. These results indicate that policymakers should seize the carbon mitigation dividend of the ITP to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality. Policymakers should also reduce the regional development differences, improve the level of opening to the outside world, strengthen the construction of green demonstration zones for industrial transfer to mitigate carbon emissions.

Urbanization and haze-governance performance: Evidence from China's 248 cities.

Using a panel data set of 248 Chinese cities at the prefecture level and above from 2004 to 2013, this study employs the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method based on a non-angular and non-radial directional distance function (DDF) combined with the overall technology, to measure the haze-governance performance. Furthermore, we construct a composite index based on the nighttime light (NTL) data to reflect the urbanization level, and use a spatial Durbin model (SDM) to investigate the effect and its mechanism of urbanization on the haze-governance performance. The results show a significant U-shaped curve relationship between urbanization and haze-governance performance for the samples of both the whole country and sub-regions. When urbanization exceeds a certain critical level, urbanization is conducive to the improvement of haze-governance performance. The proportion of cities exceeding the critical level in eastern China is higher than in central and western China. The mechanism analysis reveals that urbanization exerts a U-shaped influence on haze-governance performance via the effects of industrial structure, technological innovation, and human capital accumulation. In addition, as for the whole country, urbanization in neighboring regions also has a U-shaped spatial spillover effect on local haze-governance performance; however, the corresponding critical value is relatively small. In eastern China and in central and western China, urbanization in neighboring regions exhibits one-way positive and negative effects on local haze-governance performance, respectively.

The effect of environmental regulation on air pollution, productivity, and factor structure: a quasi-natural experiment evidence from China.

This paper makes a first empirical attempt at estimating the effects of environmental regulation on air pollution, total factor productivity (TFP), and factor structure based on a quasi-natural experiment method using a novel dataset of 216 prefectural-level cities during the years 1998-2016 in China. Specifically, we are focused on the policy impact of the listed key environmental protection (KEP) prefectures which subject to more stringent environmental regulations than non-KEP prefectures. Our empirical results show that the PM2.5 intensity, environmental performance, and TFP of the KEP prefectures are significantly lower than the non-KEP prefectures. The environmental policy also affects the factor structure of KEP cites. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the policy significantly lowered the PM2.5 for central and western cities while it is unclear for eastern cities. Our findings also document that the policy effects are unclear in the long term. Various robustness checks confirm the internal validity. These estimation results are instructive to the policymakers. We suggest that the central government should measure the effectiveness of policies within 5 years of policy formulation. Governments at all levels should make targeted adjustments based on actual impact effects. The central government should be granted local governments more speaking power and flexibility in policy implementation when formulating environmental regulatory policies. Otherwise, the central government also needs to improve the communication medium with provincial governments.

Correction: Evaluation and evolution of bank efficiency considering heterogeneity technology: An empirical study from China.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204559.].

Evaluation and evolution of bank efficiency considering heterogeneity technology: An empirical study from China.

The performances of different types of banks may vary due to heterogeneous technology, which can be examined by metafrontier analysis. However, the metafrontier constructed in most existing literature is concave, resulting in a biased estimation of efficiency. Based on 93 Chinese commercial banks over the period of 2005-2016, we first evaluate the banking efficiency by using the proposed data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, NCMeta-US-NSBM, which simultaneously incorporates a non-concave metafrontier technique, undesirable outputs, and super efficiency into a network slacks-based measure (NSBM) model. Subsequently, the evolution of banking efficiency during the study period is investigated on the basis of the Dagum Gini index and kernel density estimation methods. The main empirical results show the following. 1) There exists significant disparity/heterogeneity in banking efficiency for overall efficiency, productivity efficiency, and profitability efficiency. 2) The results of the technology gap ratio (TGR) and the evaluation of stated-owned banks (SOB), joint-stock banks (JSB), and city commercial banks (CCB) in the productivity stage are higher than those in the profitability stage, indicating that most of the banks have a large space for improvement, especially for SOB and JSB in the profitability stage. 3) The major contribution of the overall difference of banking efficiency in China is the intensity of the transvariation. 4) Although the kernel density estimations for different efficiency scores have similar distributions in corresponding years, the multilevel differentiation phenomenon of banking efficiency may appear after 2008.

Impacts of Dynamic Agglomeration Externalities on Eco-Efficiency: Empirical Evidence from China.

Ecological efficiency (eco-efficiency) reflects the synergetic degree of the development of resource, economic, and environmental systems. This paper measures urban eco-efficiency based on a nonconvex metafrontier data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach using data from 191 cities in China during the years of 2003 to 2013. In particular, the impacts of dynamic agglomeration externalities on urban eco-efficiency are investigated. Our empirical results show that eco-efficiency decreased from 2003 to 2013, and its spatial distribution demonstrates significant regional heterogeneity. Additionally, there exists an inverted U-shape relationship between dynamic externalities, including Marshall-Arrow-Romer (MAR), Jacobs and Porter externalities, and eco-efficiency. We also find that eco-efficiency can be enhanced by strengthening environmental regulations, optimizing industrial structures, and improving technological capacity. These findings are robust to alternative eco-efficiency measures, model specifications, and estimation approaches. Furthermore, we discuss related policy implications of our research results.