High-quality Economic Growth Research Articles

Do smart city policies improve energy efficiency? Evidence from China

To address air pollution and offer a convenient and comfortable living environment, the Chinese government launched a smart city pilot (SCP) project in 2012, accompanied by a comprehensive set of environmental and energy-related laws and regulations. Although academic interest in smart cities has surged, there remains a notable gap in empirical research exploring the economic, environmental, and energy effects of such initiatives. Taking 232 prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2017 as research subjects, this study measures energy efficiency by using energy consumption per unit of GDP and adopts a difference-in-differences (DID) analysis to investigate the impact of SCPs on energy efficiency. The empirical results indicate that SCPs improved energy efficiency by promoting urban technological innovation capabilities and green total factor productivity, and this effect was more pronounced in cities that were more dependent on traditional fossil fuel energy sources and had more developed fiscal and financial levels. Studying the impact of smart city construction on energy utilization efficiency in developing countries, such as China, is not only significantly enlightening for China’s green and low-carbon transition but also provides reference opinions for constructing smart cities and the path to enhancing energy efficiency in other developing countries. The findings provide valuable insights into the global development of smart cities, urban sustainability, and high-quality economic growth.

Does digital infrastructure construction impact urban carbon emission reduction? Evidence from China's smart city construction.

As the cornerstone of the digital economy, the construction of digital infrastructure plays a crucial role in promoting China's high-quality economic growth.. Against the backdrop of the "dual-carbon" goals, the development of digital infrastructure will provide new momentum for carbon emissions reduction in urban areas. This study utilizes unbalanced panel data from 277 prefecture-level cities in China between 2008 and 2019, treating the smart city construction as a quasi-natural experiment, to systematically evaluate the impact of the pilot construction of smart city on urban carbon emissions intensity. The research findings reveal that the construction of the smart city has significantly contributed to the reduction of urban carbon emissions intensity, indicating that digital infrastructure contributes to urban carbon emission reduction. The reduction of carbon emissions resulting from smart city construction is particularly significant in the East and Central regions., as well as regions with high financial development levels, regions with high human capital levels and non resource-based cities. The construction of the smart city primarily achieves the reduction of urban carbon emissions intensity through two main pathways: improving the penetration rate of digital infrastructure and enhancing technological innovation capability. Therefore, this study recommends that local governments strengthen the integration and penetration of digital infrastructure with traditional industries, foster urban innovation vitality, and accelerate the transformation towards green and low-carbon cities.

Does environmental pollution reduce residents’ income? Evidence from CFPS in China

Understanding the relationship between environmental pollution and residents’ income is extremely important for promoting sustained progress and high-quality economic growth. This research examines the impact, mechanism, and heterogeneity of environmental contamination on residents’ earnings by fusing the micro data from China Family Panel Survey with the macro data of government statistics. The results reveal that environmental degradation has a significantly negative impact on residents’ individual income. Further research on the intermediary mechanism finds that environmental pollution plays a harmful role in residents’ income by reducing residents’ subjective well-being and labor employment. Besides, the income effect of environmental pollution is significantly heterogeneous among different regions and differentiated groups. The deteriorating environmental quality widens urban–rural income gap and increases wage inequality of inhabitants in eastern, central, and western regions of China. The gender income gap and the income disparity between different income brackets also expand with environmental deterioration. These findings not only prove that long-term development at the cost of the ecological environment is undesirable, but also demonstrate the important role of the improvement of ecological environmental quality in promoting human well-being.

Spatial analysis of digital economy and its driving factors: A case study of the Yangtze River Delta City Cluster in China.

The digital economy (DE) has become a major breakthrough in promoting industrial upgrading and an important engine for high-quality economic growth. However, most studies have neglected the important driving effect of regional economic and social (RES) development on DE. In this paper, we discuss the mechanism of RES development promoting the development of DE, and establish a demand-driven regional DE development model to express the general idea. With the help of spatial analysis toolbox in ArcGIS software, the spatial development characteristics of DE in the Yangtze River Delta City Cluster (YRDCC) is explored. We find the imbalance of spatial development is very significant in YRDCC, no matter at the provincial level or city level. Quantitative analysis reveals that less than 1% likelihood that the imbalanced or clustered pattern of DE development in YRDCC could be the result of random chance. Geographically weighted regression (GWR) analysis with publicly available dataset of YRDCC indicates RES development significantly promotes the development of DE.

Digital Economy’s Impact on High-Quality Economic Growth: a Comprehensive Analysis in the Context of China

Digital Economy’s Impact on High-Quality Economic Growth: a Comprehensive Analysis in the Context of China

Digital transformation and corporate ESG information disclosure herd effect

This study investigates how digital transformation influences the tendency of companies to engage in herd behavior regarding the disclosure of ESG information. The findings indicate that digital transformation notably increases herd behavior in ESG information disclosure among these companies. Additional analysis considering different types of companies shows that this effect is stronger in private sector firms and those operating in highly competitive environments. The research offers practical insights and serves as an empirical and theoretical resource to support the advancement of digital transformation in businesses, contributing to the broader goal of achieving high-quality economic growth.

Systematic evaluation of integration between China's digital economy and sports industry: Two-stage grey relational analysis and vector autoregressive model.

The development of the digital economy constitutes a key component of China's endeavors to advance towards "Digital China." The sports industry functions as a new catalyst for high-quality economic growth. This study systematically evaluated the integration between these two sectors. First, we conducted two levels of grey relational analysis to assess their integration between 2016 and 2021. Second, we conducted a VAR analysis to determine whether their integration between 2009 and 2021 represents a causal relationship. At the macro level, the grey relational analysis reveals that the sports industry (grade = 0.770) ranked second among China's eight key economic sectors in terms of digital economy integration. At the meso level, a wide variation (ranging from 0.606 to 0.789) existed in the grade of integration between the digital economy and the sub-sectors of the sports industry. According to the VAR model, the digital economy does not Granger cause (p = 0.344) the growth of the sports industry. This study yielded two added values to the existing literature: First, there exists a sectoral imbalance in the digitization process; second, the explosive growth of the sports industry was not primarily caused by the digital economy. Accordingly, the "sports + digital" complex is still in the first wave of technological integration. We propose three policy recommendations, namely, sectoral synergistic development, overtaking via esports IP, and new economy and new regulation. Collectively, these findings provide updated insights for the digital transformation towards "building a leading sports nation" and "Digital China."

Research on the driving effect of marine economy on the high-quality development of regional economy – Evidence from China’s coastal areas

Exploring the driving effect of the marine economy on high-quality economic development can help improve the quality of national economic development and optimize the direction of marine economic development. Based on the data of China’s coastal areas from 2006 to 2019, this study adopts the entropy weight-TOPSIS method to comprehensively evaluate the level of marine economy and the high-quality economic development in coastal areas. Further, we use random forest regression and partial dependence plots to reveal the driving effect of the marine economy on the advancement of high-quality economic growth in China’s coastal areas. The results show that the driving effect of the marine economy on the high-quality development of coastal areas is affected by the moderating effect of the economic elements, and regions should choose their development paths according to the location of their elements in the optimal interval. Our research results can provide a scientific foundation for the formulation of differentiated economic high-quality development policies in China’s coastal areas.

A GIS-based Study of The Impact of HSR Network Distribution on Firms' Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from Listed Manufacturing Firms in China

With the rapid development of the economy, enterprises are increasingly pursuing efficient division of labor and communication, and in order to achieve high-quality economic growth and sustainable development, high speed rail (HSR) has been born. Therefore, the study of the impact of HSR accessibility on the total factor productivity (TFP) of enterprises has become a hot topic of research in today's academia. In this paper, firstly, based on GIS network analysis, the routes and stations after opening are matched with the locations of enterprises to describe the spatial correlation between HSR and the locations of enterprises as well as the distribution of HSR among enterprises; secondly, a multi-period difference-in-difference model (DID) is utilized to study the impact of HSR opening on TFP of enterprises on the basis of the data of China's listed manufacturing enterprises in the period of 2000-2017; and The PSM-DID model to test the robustness of the empirical results; finally, the path of the impact of HSR on the TFP is explored. The empirical results are as follows: (1) The distribution of HSR and the location of listed enterprises are highly correlated in terms of geographic distribution information; (2) HSR has a significant impact on the TFP, and the impact effect is different in different periods; (3) HSR mainly affects the TFP of enterprises by using the innovative behavior of enterprises and industrial agglomeration as the mediating variables.

Study on the Impact of Carbon Emission Trading Pilot on Green Land Use Efficiency in Cities

Under the overarching principle of sustainability, the reliance solely on expanding the landmass to meet the demand for high-quality economic growth is unsustainable. To address the need for harmonious ecological–economic development, this paper examines the influence of carbon emissions trading (CET) policies on the urban land green utilization efficiency (LGUE) from an environmental regulation perspective. Harnessing municipal panel data from 278 cities across China between 2011 and 2020, the study initially employs a super-efficient SBM model to estimate the urban LGUE. Further, a progressive difference-in-differences methodology is utilized to delve into CET’s impact on the LGUE. The main results are as follows. (1) Through the visual analysis of the time–space evolution trend, the LGUE displays pronounced spatial agglomeration, with the LGUE values being higher in the central and western regions compared to the east, and in the south versus the north. Over time, it follows a “U-shaped” change pattern. (2) The CET policy exerts a statistically significant positive influence on the LGUE, although this effect is accompanied by a temporal lag. Following a number of approaches to validate the results, the impact remains significant. (3) Regarding the heterogenous effects, the CET policy appears to have a greater impact on resource-based cities and those in the eastern part of China relative to non-resource-based and central–western cities. This research offers empirical evidence and countermeasure recommendations for the further refinement of the CET policy to enhance the urban LGUE.

Comparative Study on the Digital Economy Development Based on TOPSIS Comprehensive Evaluation: A Case Study of the Middle and Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River

Promoting the digital economy in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River can not only boost the development of e-commerce, energy science and technology and other industries, but also pave the theoretical way for the digital economy development in various regions, so as to further provide an important practical basis for achieving high-quality economic growth. In this paper, seven provinces in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River are taken as the research objects. Meanwhile, the development and different trends of the digital economy in each region are quantitatively analyzed and compared to propose suggestions for better development of the digital economy in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. On this basis, this paper first constructs the evaluation and measurement model of the digital economy development, and then gives the weights to the relevant indices through the analytic hierarchy process. After that, the regions in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River are scored and compared via the TOPSIS comprehensive evaluation, which identifies that the mobile phone penetration, the number of Internet broadband access ports and the telecom business income are vital indices to accelerate the digital economy development. Finally, this paper argues that governments should increase investment in digital infrastructure construction and promote the deep integration of digital technology and industry.

Impact of marine industrial agglomeration on high-quality marine economic development: the mediating effect of knowledge spillover

Industrial agglomeration significantly influences economic development; however, its impact on high-quality economic growth within the marine industry remains understudied. We conducted a study using panel data from 11 coastal provinces in China (2008–2020) and used the entropy method to quantify high-quality marine economic development (HQMED). Our study meticulously examines the direct, mediating, and nonlinear effects of marine industrial agglomeration (MIA) on HQMED. The key findings include the following: (1) There is a steady HQMED growth and reduced interprovincial gaps. (2) MIA significantly enhances local HQMED and leads to positive spatial spillover to adjacent regions. (3) The analysis of the mediating effect highlights the pivotal role of knowledge spillover in MIA’s influence on HQMED. (4) Threshold analysis shows significant MIA effects on local and neighboring HQMED using knowledge spillover as a threshold variable. The study’s findings hold theoretical and practical significance and guide MIA’s role in fostering sustainable marine economic development in China.

Navigating High-Quality Economic Growth: An Examination of Regional Innovation Ecosystems in China Through Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Navigating High-Quality Economic Growth: An Examination of Regional Innovation Ecosystems in China Through Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

The impact of the free trade zones construction on green technological innovation efficiency ——evidence from 288 cities in Chinese

We measure the green technology innovation efficiency of 288 cities in China from static and dynamic dimensions using the super−SBM model and Malmquist−Luenberger index, and employ "Difference in Difference" (DID) model to evaluate the impact of FTZs construction on green technology innovation efficiency using panel data from 288 prefecture-level cities from 2008 to 2020. The findings show: (1) The FTZs significantly improve green technology innovation efficiency. The decomposition indexes promote the green technology innovation efficiency more from the dynamic productivity dimension (GTFP) functioning on technological advancement. (2) The FTZs can boost the efficiency of green technology innovation through industrial agglomeration, digital economy, and government financial support; (3) The effect of FTZs on the efficiency of green technology innovation differs based on the size and location of the city. Green technology innovation will reach maximum potential when promoting FTZ policy in less developed central, western, and interior regions. This study addresses whether FTZ policies can genuinely support regional green innovation and policy insights to expand opening up and enhance high-quality economic growth.

Can digital financial development promote corporate green technology innovation?

In an era where digital technology spearheads high-quality economic growth, its fusion with traditional financial services has revolutionized the supply, process, and efficiency of these services. This integration provides precise and effective touchpoints for financial services in the real economy. This study, using data from all A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen, empirically examines how digital finance boosts green technological innovation in enterprises and explores the underlying mechanisms. The findings reveal that digital finance significantly enhances green innovation by optimizing financial resource allocation and easing firms' financing constraints. The impact of digital finance is more pronounced in enterprises with broader reach, deeper application, higher pollution levels, and those outside the high-tech sector. Further analysis distinguishes the types of green innovation, noting that digital finance more effectively supports inventive innovation in non-polluting and non-high-tech firms, while significantly aiding practical innovation in heavily polluting companies. Additionally, the study finds that the beneficial impact of digital finance on green innovation also boosts overall corporate productivity.

Dynamic role of clean energy and sustainable economic growth in coastal region: Novel observations from China

China's coastal region is the major geographical unit for the future development of China's industrial sector. The transformation of basic structure to high-class development in China's coastal places is a significant tool for promoting the changes related to quality, power and efficiency in regional economic development. In the 21st century, environmental and energy issues have increased worldwide, and challenges related to environmental pollution, energy crises, and ecological imbalances have emerged. To climate change and energy utilization, the sustainable progress of clean energy is the new route of future energy development. Based on China's non-polluting energy growth process in the last ten years, this article explores China's clean/green energy policies and economic growth development plans. Clean energy utilization is crucial for sustainable development in the context of high-quality economic growth and climate change. However, the monetary evolution and carbon emission are not investigated whole from the clean energy aspects. Using Wind energy sources as the acceptable variable, this paper employs threshold regression and impulse functions to assess the energy consumption and economic growth on carbon emission in 30 Chinese provinces over the 2000 to 2020 period. The Deep Belief Network (DBN) model predicts wind energy utilization and efficiency. The results show that economic development and carbon emissions are connected. Further, growth influences promote the offset of carbon emissions. Green innovation alters the nexus of carbon emissions, and China's economy reduces carbon usage. It provides the decision-making policies for clean energy development.

Research on the impact of the digital economy on the level of industrial structure: An empirical study of 280 cities in China.

As the digital revolution deepens, the digital economy (DE) is reshaping the global industrial structure (IS). This paper utilizes data from 280 Chinese cities between 2007 and 2020 to conduct an in-depth analysis of how DE propels the upgrading of IS and explores the role of human capital (HC) in this process. The research indicates that DE significantly fosters the optimization of IS. Additionally, it was discovered that the growth of HC plays a pivotal mediating role in this evolution, complementing existing research on the relationship between higher education and industrial upgrading. By adopting spatial econometric methods, this study unveils the spillover effects of DE in geographical space, identifying a positive influence on the industrial upgrading of surrounding regions. The paper also confirms the nonlinear characteristics of DE's impact on IS upgrading, which manifests as a pronounced inverted U-shaped trend, marking a novel discovery. Further findings suggest that in regions with more advanced artificial intelligence technologies, the impact of DE on industrial optimization is more significant, highlighting the role of regional disparities in the digital transformation. In conclusion, the paper proposes policy recommendations based on the research findings to facilitate the development of DE and the elevation of IS levels, thereby promoting high-quality economic growth.

Regional coordinated development and green transformation: Evidence from major national strategic zones

Major National Strategic Zones (MNSZ) play a crucial role in China's Regional coordinated development (RCD), and achieving a win-win situation between RCD and comprehensive green transformation is essential for promoting high-quality economic growth. This paper empirically investigates the green transformation effect and its underlying mechanism in MNSZ, utilizing data from Chinese industrial enterprises and pollution records, along with key variables from government work reports (GWR). The findings reveal an “inverted U” curve relationship between RCD and comprehensive green transformation, suggesting that green transformation is a phased outcome of the RCD strategy, with a less significant long-term effect in MNSZ. These results hold strong under various endogeneity, robustness, and externality tests. The mechanism analysis highlights that local governments can enhance the effectiveness of green transformation in MNSZ through human capital investment, financial market improvement, and policy adjustment. However, the time lag effect of policy adjustment after crossing the inflection point and the market's self-selection effect hinder comprehensive green transformation. To address these challenges, improving human resources and the capital market while reducing the welfare loss of policy adjustments will strengthen the long-term facilitation effect of green transformation. This study offers valuable empirical evidence for the optimal implementation of regional development strategies in China and other developing countries.

The dynamic relationship among green logistics, technological innovation and green economy: Evidence from China

Under the background of “double carbon”, exploring the growth path of green logistics and enhancing the driving force of technological innovation is the urgent need of our country to comply with the green transformation of its economy and realize high-quality economic growth. Taking the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2010 to 2020 as the sample, the green logistics index evaluation system is constructed based on the driver-press-state-impact-response (DPSIR) theoretical framework, and the green economic efficiency of each province in the sample period is measured by using the non-expected output Super- Slacks-based measure (SBM) model, and by constructing the panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model including technological innovation is used to systematically elaborate the dynamic influence paths among the three. The study found that: China's green economy, technological innovation, and green logistics all have their own mechanisms for growth, which will gradually diminish over time. In the near and long term, green logistics will promote technological innovations and the evolution of a green economy, but there is a lag in the long-term benefits of green logistics on technological progress. In the short term, technological innovation does not lend support to the growth of a green economy, but over time, the impact of technological innovation on the growth of that economy will shift from negative to positive. This shows that improving technological innovation capability is an important path for green logistics to promote green economic efficiency. The findings of the study provide a basis for decision making to achieve the emission reduction target and improve the efficiency of the green economy.

Spatial effect of carbon neutrality target on high-quality economic development-Channel analysis based on total factor productivity.

This study utilizes panel data from 30 provinces in mainland China from 2011 to 2020 to investigate the impact of carbon-neutral development on economic high-quality development by constructing an economic high-quality development index and a carbon-neutral development index. Firstly, the study examines the effects of carbon-neutral development on economic high-quality development using baseline regression and spatial Durbin regression. The results indicate that carbon-neutral development has a positive direct effect on economic high-quality growth, but there are negative spatial spillover effects. Secondly, this study employs total factor productivity (TFP) as an intermediate variable in the mediation model regression. The findings demonstrate that carbon-neutral development significantly improves TFP, and the significant improvement in TFP promotes high-quality economic growth. Lastly, the study conducts regional heterogeneity analysis and finds a significant promoting effect of carbon-neutral development on economic high-quality development in the eastern and central regions of China, while it is not significant in the western region. Therefore, it is recommended that China, in the process of achieving carbon-neutral growth, consider the geographical connections between different regions to prevent negative spillover effects. Additionally, regional heterogeneity should be taken into account when formulating relevant policies to promote economic high-quality development.