Does the implementation of green finance regulation promote the high-quality development of enterprises? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China.

The improvement of enterprise total factor productivity and labor productivity is the micro-embodiment of high-quality economic development. Green finance relies on the dual functions of resource allocation and environmental regulation to guide enterprises to adjust their mode of operation through incentive and restraint mechanisms, attach importance to energy conservation and environmental protection, and guide enterprises to develop with high quality. Taking the construction of the green financial supervision system in 2016 as a quasi-natural experiment, we constructed a difference-in-difference model to investigate the impact and mechanism of green finance on the high-quality development of enterprises, based on the panel data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2006 to 2020. The results show that the implementation of green finance effectively promotes the high-quality development of enterprises. This promotion effect is heterogeneous from perspectives of enterprise-specific characteristics, executive education background, and environmental regulation intensity. The influence mechanisms mainly rely on tightening financial constraints, upgrading the level of green technology innovation, and improving the quality of internal control. These findings provide an important decision-making reference for better implementing green finance policies and promoting high-quality economic development under the green and low-carbon concept and carbon peak carbon neutrality goals.

Digital finance and regional green innovation: the perspective of environmental regulation.

The relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation has been partially confirmed, yet the role of environmental regulation in it remains unexplored. Therefore, this paper examines the impact of digital finance on regional green innovation and tests the moderating role of environmental regulation using Chinese city-level data from 2011 to 2019 as a research sample. The results show that digital finance can significantly promote regional green innovation by alleviating regional financing constraints and increasing regional R&D investment. Besides, digital finance has apparent regional difference effects (the contribution of digital finance to regional green innovation is greater in eastern China than in western China, and the development of digital finance in neighbouring regions has a negative transmission effect on local green innovation). Finally, environmental regulation positively moderates the relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation. This paper explores the relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation from the perspective of environmental regulation, providing empirical evidence to promote regional green innovation.

The spatiotemporal effects of environmental regulation on green innovation: Evidence from Chinese cities.

Environmental regulation is expected to stimulate green innovation for the promotion of urban sustainability, while the effectiveness of this stimulus has long been debated under the Porter hypothesis and the crowding out theory. Empirical studies under different contexts have not reached a consistent conclusion yet. Based on the data of 276 cities in China from 2003 to 2013, this study captures the spatiotemporal non-stationarity in the effects of environmental regulation on green innovation with the combination of Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR) and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm. The results show that environmental regulation has an overall U-shape impact on green innovation, indicating that the Porter hypothesis and the crowding out theory are not in conflict, but are theoretical interpretations of different stages of local responses to environmental regulation. Specifically, the effects of environmental regulation on green innovation present to be diverse in patterns that include enhancing, stagnant, undermining, U-shape, and inverted U-shape. These contextualized relationships are shaped by local industrial incentives and innovation capacities of pursing green transformations. The spatiotemporal findings allow policymakers to better understand the multi-staged and geographically diverse impacts of environmental regulation on green innovations, and formulate targeted policies for different localities.

Non-linear effects of heterogeneous environmental regulations on industrial relocation: Do compliance costs work?

Reasonably designing environmental regulations for compliance-driven industrial relocation can avoid new pollution havens. The Cournot duopoly model simulates that the necessary condition for industrial relocation is differentiated market costs. Then, based on the province-industrial data of six Chinese pollution-intensive industries during 2005-2019, this study applies spatial Durbin model to explore the non-linear effects of heterogeneous environmental regulations on industrial relocation. Results shown that command-and-control environmental regulation manifests a U-shaped curve with local industrial relocation, with inverted U-shaped spillover effect radiating a road distance of 650 km, and both internal and external costs play the mediating roles; Market incentive environmental regulation has inverted U-shaped curves with industrial relocation in local and neighboring regions, it creates dual costs and works well in both short and long terms, which is the most potential regulatory tool to avoid pollution relocation accompanying industrial relocation; Voluntary environmental regulation exhibits inverted U-shaped relationships with industrial relocation in direct and spillover effects, and works through increased external cost rather than internal cost. Its spatial spillover radiates the longest 1250 km due to rapid spread of public opinions, but this effect takes more than 3 years to be effective.

The influence of COVID-19 on agricultural economy and emergency mitigation measures in China: A text mining analysis.

Understanding the influence of COVID-19 on China's agricultural economy and the Chinese government's emergency measures to ease the economic impacts of viral spread can offer urgently-needed lessons while this virus continues to spread across the globe. Thus, this study collected over 750,000 words upon the topic of COVID-19 and agriculture from the largest two media channels in China: WeChat and Sina Weibo, and employed web crawler technology and text mining method to explore the influence of COVID-19 on agricultural economy and mitigation measures in China. The results show that: (1) the impact of COVID-19 on China's agricultural economy at the very first phase is mainly reflected in eight aspects as crop production, agricultural products supply, livestock production, farmers' income and employment, economic crop development, agricultural products sales model, leisure agriculture development, and agricultural products trade. (2) The government's immediate countermeasures include resuming agricultural production and farmers' work, providing financial support, stabilizing agricultural production and products supply, promoting agricultural products sale, providing subsidies, providing agricultural technology guidance and field management, and providing assistance to poor farmers to reduce poverty. (3) The order of government's immediate countermeasures is not all in line with the order of impact aspects, which indicates that more-tailored policies should be implemented to mitigate the strikes of COVID-19 on China's agricultural economy in the future.

Does market segmentation necessarily discourage energy efficiency?

Prior research tends to propose and examine the negative relationship between market segmentation and energy efficiency. Does market segmentation necessarily impair energy efficiency? Considering the critical role that Chinaese government play in managing erergy efficiency, we propose a non-linear relationship between market segmentation and energy efficiency. Using data of 30 provinces in Mainland China during 2000 to 2017, we find an inverse U-shaped relationship between market segmentation and energy efficiency. Our findings remain robust after controlling endogeneity issues. Therefore, a moderate level of market segmentation is acceptable and beneficial for long-term improvement of energy efficiency in emerging economies.

Spatiotemporal characteristics and driving forces of construction land expansion in Yangtze River economic belt, China.

With rapid economic and population growth, construction land expansion in Yangtze River economic belt in China becomes substantial, carrying significant social and economic implications. This research uses Expansion Speed Index and Expansion Intensity Index to examine spatiotemporal characteristics of construction land expansion in the Yangtze River economic belt from 2000 to 2017. Based on a STIRPAT model, driving forces of construction land expansion are measured by Principal Component Analysis and Ordinary Least Square regression. The results show that: (1) there is a clear expansion pattern regarding the time sequence in provinces/cities of the Yangtze River economic belt, with rapid expansion in the initial stage, moderate expansion in the middle stage and rapid expansion in the later stage. (2) Spatial analysis demonstrates first expansion in the lower reaches in the early stage, rapid expansion of the upper reaches in the middle and later stage, and steady expansion of the middle reaches throughout the research period. (3)There are statistical significant correlations between construction land expansion and GDP, social fixed asset investments, population at the end of the year, population urbanization rate, per capita road area, and number of scientific and technological professionals as well as secondary and tertiary industry values. Of these factors, GDP, social fixed asset investments, population urbanization rate and second industry value are important common driving forces of construction land expansion in this region. The research findings have significant policy implications particularly on coordinated development of urban agglomerations and sustainable industry upgrading when construction land expansion is concerned.

The effects of environmental regulation and industrial structure on carbon dioxide emission: a non-linear investigation.

To investigate the effects of government environmental regulation and industrial structure changes on carbon dioxide emissions, this research analyzes annual data over the period 2003-2015 covering 30 provinces in China (except for Tibet) with the panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model. The empirical results show obvious non-linear effects of environmental regulation and industrial structure on carbon dioxide emission. Taking the effects of both linearity and non-linearity into consideration, environmental regulation will reduce carbon emissions with the change of industrial structure rationalization (SR). When the level of industrial structure optimization (SH) is low, environmental regulation promotes carbon dioxide emissions. When the level of industrial structure optimization (SH) is high, environmental regulation plays a significant inhibitive role on carbon dioxide emissions. The Kuznets relationship between GDP per capita (PGDP) and carbon dioxide emissions is influenced by local industrial structure rationalization and industrial structure optimization. Therefore, environmental regulation policies suitable for local conditions should be made based on the transition of the local industrial structure.

Oil price shocks, economic policy uncertainty and industrial economic growth in China.

This paper combines a Granger causality test and a VAR model to investigate the relationships among oil price shocks, global economic policy uncertainty (GEPU), and China's industrial economic growth. Based on monthly data from 2000 to 2017, we reveal that GEPU and world oil prices jointly Granger cause China's industrial economic growth; world oil prices have a positive effect on China's industrial economic growth, while GEPU has a negative effect. Further analyses investigate the asymmetry effect of oil prices and find that the negative component shows a more significant impact on China's industrial economic growth. The results are robust to different oil price and EPU proxies.

The time-varying relationship between economic globalization and the ideological center of gravity of party systems.

Does economic globalization influence the positioning of parties and, as a consequence, the ideological characteristics of party systems? Answering this question is important because we need to understand the constraints that parties face in formulating policies from which voters have to choose. In our paper, we take a systemic perspective and conceptualize a party system's ideological center of gravity as the outcome of interest. We define the center of gravity as the weighted mean position of all parliamentary parties in a country that represents the position to which parties gravitate. We start by formulating static hypotheses on the effect of imports and exports on the center of gravity and derive their underlying mechanisms. We further derive dynamic hypotheses stipulating varying effects over time based on the premise that partisan attitudes toward globalization have undergone multiple changes over the last decades. A time-series cross-section analysis of 129 elections in 15 Western European countries from 1974 to 2015 finds evidence for opposite effects of exports and imports in the pooled data. Additionally, a moving-window analysis indicates that the relationship between globalization and the center of gravity varies over time. This is a significant finding because it suggests that economic globalization has an influence on party systems and that it is important to test for time-varying effects.

Temporal and Spatial Differentiations in Environmental Governance.

With the general degradation of environmental carrying capacity in recent years, many developing countries are facing with the dual task of economic development and environmental protection. To explore the issue of urban environmental governance, in this research, we establish a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model to investigate the environmental governance regarding temporal and spatial efficiency. Further, we deconstruct environmental governance efficiency into comprehensive efficiency, pure technical efficiency, and scale efficiency and develop a Tobit model to analyze the influencing factors affecting urban environmental governance efficiency. In addition, the above DEA, Tobit model, and deconstruction of efficiency have been applied to study environmental governance efficiency for the Yangtze River urban agglomeration. Findings include: (1) The gap in environmental governance efficiency between cities is highly noticeable, as the highest efficiency index is 0.934, the lowest is only 0.246, and the comprehensive efficiency index has fallen sharply from 0.708 to 0.493 in the past 10 years; (2) Environmental governance efficiency is basically driven by technological progress, while the scale efficiency change index is the main driver of the technological progress change index; (3) For environmental governance efficiency, urbanization and capital openness are irrelevant factors, economic level and urban construction are unfavorable factors, and industrial structure and population density are favorable factors. These findings will help urban agglomerations to effectively avoid the adverse effects of environmental governance efficiency in economic development, and achieve a coordinated development of urban construction and environmental governance.

Market segmentation and industry overcapacity considering input resources and environmental costs through the lens of governmental intervention.

The problems with China's regional industrial overcapacity are often influenced by local governments. This study constructs a framework that includes the resource and environmental costs to analyze overcapacity using the non-radial direction distance function and the price method to measure industrial capacity utilization and market segmentation in 29 provinces in China from 2002 to 2014. The empirical analysis of the spatial panel econometric model shows that (1) the industrial capacity utilization in China's provinces has a ladder-type distribution with a gradual decrease from east to west and there is a severe overcapacity in the traditional heavy industry areas; (2) local government intervention has serious negative effects on regional industry utilization and factor market segmentation more significantly inhibits the utilization rate of regional industry than commodity market segmentation; (3) economic openness improves the utilization rate of industrial capacity while the internet penetration rate and regional environmental management investment have no significant impact; and(4) a higher degree of openness and active private economic development have a positive spatial spillover effect, while there is a significant negative spatial spillover effect from local government intervention and industrial structure sophistication. This paper includes the impact of resources and the environment in overcapacity evaluations, which should guide sustainable development in emerging economies.

Neoliberalization's Propagation of Health Inequity in Urban Rebuilding Processes: The Dependence on Context and Path.

This article will discuss how neoliberal processes during urban redevelopment sustain and increase health inequities through uneven wealth accumulation and development. It will use examples of urban development in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, to highlight how key neoliberal strategies of territorial development, economic development, and place promotion- mediated through the process of creative destruction-result in uneven development and wealth accumulation, which in turn result in health inequities. The history of rebuilding processes in Baltimore offers insight into the context and path-dependency of current neoliberalization rebuilding processes and current health inequities.

Alcohol and economic development: Observations on the kingdom of Bhutan.

Bhutan is a small country undergoing rapid social change arising from income growth, urbanisation and Western cultural influence. Markers of poverty, namely infectious disease and infant mortality, have improved dramatically. The attention of health authorities is now focused on the non-communicable disease and injury burdens, to which alcohol consumption is a major contributor. The paper draws on official data to characterise the consumption of alcohol and related harm, and the nature of the alcohol market, with commentary on crucial aspects of availability policies and drink-driving regulation that need reform. Kypri K, Dorji G, Dalton C. Alcohol and economic development: Observations on the kingdom of Bhutan. Drug Alcohol Rev 2017;36:333ȃ336.].

Spatial Characteristics and Driving Factors of Provincial Wastewater Discharge in China.

Based on the increasing pressure on the water environment, this study aims to clarify the overall status of wastewater discharge in China, including the spatio-temporal distribution characteristics of wastewater discharge and its driving factors, so as to provide reference for developing "emission reduction" strategies in China and discuss regional sustainable development and resources environment policies. We utilized the Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) method to analyze the characteristics of the spatio-temporal distribution of the total wastewater discharge among 31 provinces in China from 2002 to 2013. Then, we discussed about the driving factors, affected the wastewater discharge through the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method and classified those driving factors. Results indicate that: (1) the total wastewater discharge steadily increased, based on the social economic development, with an average growth rate of 5.3% per year; the domestic wastewater discharge is the main source of total wastewater discharge, and the amount of domestic wastewater discharge is larger than the industrial wastewater discharge. There are many spatial differences of wastewater discharge among provinces via the ESDA method. For example, provinces with high wastewater discharge are mainly the developed coastal provinces such as Jiangsu Province and Guangdong Province. Provinces and their surrounding areas with low wastewater discharge are mainly the undeveloped ones in Northwest China; (2) The dominant factors affecting wastewater discharge are the economy and technological advance; The secondary one is the efficiency of resource utilization, which brings about the unstable effect; population plays a less important role in wastewater discharge. The dominant driving factors affecting wastewater discharge among 31 provinces are divided into three types, including two-factor dominant type, three-factor leading type and four-factor antagonistic type. In addition, the proposals aimed at reducing the wastewater discharge are provided on the basis of these three types.

Measuring empathy feelings in football through media value / Valor mediático en el fútbol y grado de afinidad de los fans

This paper applies media value appraisals to measure the degree of identification that players and teams inspire in football supporters. Using a large data set of media value scores in season 2014/15, we rank the most popular football players and clubs worldwide; as well as the teams’ managers with the greatest media value exposure. Then, building upon individual ratings, we determine the hierarchy of the 'Big Five' European domestic leagues, according to their comparative media value status

En este artículo se emplean indicadores de valor mediático en el fútbol para estimar el grado de identificación que jugadores y clubs inspiran entre los aficionados. A partir de amplias bases de datos del valor mediático en la temporada 2014/15, se elaboran los rankings mundiales de jugadores y clubs, así como el ranking de los entrenadores con mayor visibilidad en los medios. Además, agregando registros individuales, puede determinarse la jerarquía de estatus mediático de las cinco grandes ligas domésticas de Europa

Australia is 'free to choose' economic growth and falling environmental pressures.

Over two centuries of economic growth have put undeniable pressure on the ecological systems that underpin human well-being. While it is agreed that these pressures are increasing, views divide on how they may be alleviated. Some suggest technological advances will automatically keep us from transgressing key environmental thresholds; others that policy reform can reconcile economic and ecological goals; while a third school argues that only a fundamental shift in societal values can keep human demands within the Earth's ecological limits. Here we use novel integrated analysis of the energy-water-food nexus, rural land use (including biodiversity), material flows and climate change to explore whether mounting ecological pressures in Australia can be reversed, while the population grows and living standards improve. We show that, in the right circumstances, economic and environmental outcomes can be decoupled. Although economic growth is strong across all scenarios, environmental performance varies widely: pressures are projected to more than double, stabilize or fall markedly by 2050. However, we find no evidence that decoupling will occur automatically. Nor do we find that a shift in societal values is required. Rather, extensions of current policies that mobilize technology and incentivize reduced pressure account for the majority of differences in environmental performance. Our results show that Australia can make great progress towards sustainable prosperity, if it chooses to do so.