Abstract
The sustainable growth path of emerging economies has transformed from the traditional extensive model to high-quality development. Due to the impulse force of low-carbon regulation, the measurement of input–output efficiency changed into green total factor productivity (GTFP) which considers environmental factors. Past research on GTFP focused on enterprise investments to promote green innovation for their resource allocation efficiency, but green investments are often limited from marketization that is interactively influenced by low-carbon regulation. Therefore, handing green investment to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions for green economics recovery is a big challenge. Then these hypotheses are tested by the main study of 170 cities in China. Results suggested that GTFP has an inverted S-shaped curve with three inflection points and four development stages under the influence of low-carbon regulation. It means that improving green productivity is costly toward making green investments without the driving of green innovation. However, the inflection point of the growth curve—when enterprise investment activities ignore the interaction between low-carbon regulation and green investment policy—will come slowly to a period of high-quality development. Moderating results suggested that the green productivity would be weakened and the inflection point would be delayed by the low-carbon marketization index if the low-carbon regulation intensity was neglected. Therefore, this research advanced an effectively co-ordinate growth curve to search for the inflection point of green economics recovery.
Highlights
Scholars have long recognized that the effects of low-carbon regulation on green total factor productivity (GTFP) are characterized in a multi-stage process, including positive U-shaped, inverted U-shaped, and N-shaped curves [2,3,4], but this process of green performance starts from initial economic growth and decreases due to the shock of low-carbon regulation, shifts into an inflection point through green innovation [5,6]
To cope with an uncertain environment after the COVID-19 epidemic, this study proposed an integration model of green innovation and green investment by low-carbon regulation to search for the inflection point of green economic recovery
We explored this inflection point in a multi-stage growth curve of GTFP by using the panel data of 170 cities in China and found the following: (i) There is a significant positive correlation between green innovation and green investment, and both of them have an inverted Ushaped effect on GTFP; (ii) The inverted U-shaped curve will be smoother if low-carbon marketization index significantly weakened the relationship between green investment and GTFP; (iii) The inverted U-shaped curve can be steeper when the low-carbon regulation intensity significantly strengthened the relationship between green innovation and GTFP; (iv) Under these influences, GTFP shows an inverted S-shaped growth curve with three inflection points and four development stages
Summary
Many countries advocating for green development have made great efforts on the improvement of GTFP. It is a sensitive factor adding environmental input–output efficiency for the strategic direction of enterprises to encourage their green innovation willingness to reduce the carbon dioxide emission in order to match carbon mitigation targets. Scholars have long recognized that the effects of low-carbon regulation on GTFP are characterized in a multi-stage process, including positive U-shaped, inverted U-shaped, and N-shaped curves [2,3,4], but this process of green performance starts from initial economic growth and decreases due to the shock of low-carbon regulation, shifts into an inflection point through green innovation [5,6].
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