Low-carbon economic resilience: The inequality embodied in inter-regional trade

Abstract

The paper integrates low-carbon development into the context of economic resilience, thus proposing “Low-carbon Economic Resilience” (LER). We establish an analysis framework to analyze LER based on regional interactions. The framework indicates that regions achieve LER by transferring the development burden to others, which will result in inter-regional trade inequality. An empirical analysis focused on inter-regional trade in cities of China is carried out to illustrate this framework. We calculate the degree of economic resilience and low-carbon development in cities of China. Then we trace the environmental-economic benefits embodied in virtual built-up land flow in regions. The characteristics of virtual built-up land flow exert an impact on the spatial distribution of regional economic resilience to a certain extent. The results show that, in China, many cities achieved only economic resilience or low-carbon development, while a few cities were able to achieve LER. The latter imported built-up land with high carbon emissions or low economic benefits from others, while developing “high-quality” built-up land themselves, which was reflected in the benefits per hectare of built-up land. The differences in environmental-economic benefits from inter-regional trade cause trade inequality, and major cities are the main beneficiaries, which contributes to their achievement of LER.