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Faced with the global climate change, as a major greenhouse gas emitter, China launched a pilot policy on low-carbon city construction since 2010. Few studies have discussed how climate policies affect the investment and financing behavior of energy-intensive enterprises. Based on the micro data of A-share listed enterprises in China's energy-intensive industries, this study aims to assess the productivity effect of low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policy and investigates the mechanism of financing and investment using the difference-in-difference method. Empirical results provide evidence that the LCCP policy has significantly improved the total factor productivity of energy-intensive enterprises. In terms of the mechanisms, the LCCP policy has increased the supply of bank credit to enterprises and encouraged their long-term investment in fixed assets and R&D activities. The productivity effect of the LCCP policy is greater for state-owned enterprises and enterprises with political connection. Urban human capital, industrial agglomeration, and resource endowment contribute to the productivity effect of LCCP policy for enterprises in the energy-intensive industries. The findings show that the LCCP is an effective comprehensive policy to promote the high-quality development of energy-intensive industries, and the findings also provide enlightenment for enacting better climate transition policies. Keywords: Low-carbon city pilot, Financing and investment, Productivity effect, Energy-intensive enterprises, 1. INTRODUCTION Climate change is a major global challenge, and the transition of industrial development to a low-carbon economy is the only way to promote global sustainable development. China is [...]

This paper proposes an extended Solow decomposition framework with a finite mixture model, which is incorporated to account for heterogeneous regimes. The model decomposes green economy into two different components, namely, green total factor productivity and factor endowment. Then, we reestimate the growth sources of green economy and especially the importance of energy consumption in China's provincial industries over 2000-2015. The empirical results suggest that there are three green growth regimes across Chinese provinces for overall economy and different industries. Specifically, some provinces switch regime over time, while the others maintain the same regime. Furthermore, when controlling for regime heterogeneity, the contribution of factor endowment decreases and that of green total factor productivity increases. With respect to energy consumption, traditional methods overestimate its importance in the primary and tertiary industries and underestimate that in the secondary industry. In addition, the reliance of China's overall economy and the secondary and tertiary industries on energy consumption decreases as economy develops. Keywords: Energy consumption, Growth sources, Green economy, Heterogeneous regimes, Finite mixture model, China, 1. INTRODUCTION Since the reform and opening up in 1978, China has experienced rapid growth for nearly three decades with an average rate 10%, and especially the amount of energy [...]

This study examines the nonlinear impacts of four country risk indices on the debt-growth nexus for 61 countries in a panel data framework. Our results show evidence of the different [...]

This paper applies panel unit root, panel cointegration, and panel causality techniques to re-examine the total energy and electricity demand functions of 25 selected OECD countries during the 1978-2004 period. The panel results indicate that total energy demand is income inelastic and price inelastic, whereas electricity demand is income elastic and price inelastic. Based on the results of the panel causality test, there are reciprocal causal relationships among real income, real energy price, and total energy consumption. Furthermore, a uni-directional causality runs from income and electricity price to electricity consumption. The results for the panel as a whole suggest that the demand for total energy and electricity in the OECD countries is driven largely by strong economic growth, while consumers are largely insensitive to price changes., 1. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the total energy demand function as well as the electricity demand function in 25 selected Organization for Economic Cooperation and [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8586.2008.00287.x Byline: Jun-De Lee (*), Chien-Chiang Lee (*), Chun-Ping Chang ([dagger]) Keywords: hysteresis; OECD; panel LM unit root test; unemployment Abstract: ABSTRACT This paper applies the panel LM unit root tests with heterogeneous structural breaks in level by Im et al. (Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 67 (2005), pp. 393-419) to re-examine the validity of hysteresis in the unemployment rates of 19 OECD countries. Our empirical findings are favourable to the stationarity of the unemployment rates, i.e., the unemployment hysteresis hypothesis is strongly rejected. Our results suggest that shocks to unemployment rates are temporary and soon converge when we control for breaks. A major policy implication of the study is that a fiscal or monetary stabilization policy would not have permanent effects on the unemployment rates of the 19 OECD countries. Author Affiliation: (*)National Sun Yat-Sen, Taiwan ([dagger])Shih Chien University Kaohsiung Campus, Taiwan Article note: Correspondence: Chien-Chiang Lee, Department of Finance, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Tel: +886 7 5252000x4825 Fax: +886 7 5254899. Email: cclee@cm.nsysu.edu.tw. We would like to thank two anonymous referees and an editor for helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper. We would also like to thank Professor Junsoo Lee for making available his GAUSS codes to generate the results reported in this paper.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2007.03.003 Byline: Chien-Chiang Lee (a)(b), Chun-Ping Chang (c) Keywords: Energy consumption; GDP; Asian economies; Panel cointegration; Panel causality Abstract: This paper applies the most recently developed panel unit root, heterogeneous panel cointegration and panel-based error correction models to re-investigate co-movement and the causal relationship between energy consumption and real GDP within a multivariate framework that includes capital stock and labor input for 16 Asian countries during the 1971-2002 period. It employs the production side model (aggregate production function). The empirical results fully support a positive long-run cointegrated relationship between real GDP and energy consumption when the heterogeneous country effect is taken into account. It is found that although economic growth and energy consumption lack short-run causality, there is long-run unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to economic growth. This means that reducing energy consumption does not adversely affect GDP in the short-run but would in the long-run; thus, these countries should adopt a more vigorous energy policy. Furthermore, we broaden the investigation by dividing the sample countries into two cross-regional groups, namely the APEC and ASEAN groups, and even more important results and implications emerge. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Applied Economics, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan (b) Agricultural Policy Research Center, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan (c) Department of Business Administration, Shih Chien University Kaohsiung Campus, Kaohsiung, Taiwan Article History: Received 1 April 2005; Revised 9 March 2007; Accepted 26 March 2007

We re-study the relationship between financial development and real GDP per capita growth in 48 countries. What we find is an interesting evidence that only stock market development has positive effects on growth and that banking development has an unfavorable, if not negative, effect on growth. We examine whether or not these impacts are a product of various financial and economic conditional variables. Our conditional variables consist of financial liberalization, two sets of country development dummies, crises in banking and currency dummies, the creditor protection index as well as the anti-director and corruption indices. Our results clearly show that the conditional variables of financial liberalization, high-income level, and good shareholder protection mitigate the negative impacts of banking development on growth. In contrast, the conditional variables of middle-income level, regional Latin American, Sub-Saharan African and East Asian dummies, banking and currency crises, good creditor protection, and higher corruption strengthen the negative impacts of banking development on growth. Next, the conditional variables of middle-income level, Latin American, Sub-Saharan African, and East Asian dummies strengthen the positive impacts of stock market development on growth, whereas the conditional variables of financial liberalization mitigate the positive impacts of stock market development on growth. Last, we find that the relationship between growth and bank development is better described as a weak inverse U-shape. This inverse U-shape becomes stronger when additional stock market variables are squared. Thus, financial development and growth may, in fact, be in a nonlinear form. JEL codes: E44, G10, O16, O50 Keywords: stock market development, banking development, economic growth., THE QUESTION AS TO WHETHER financial development stimulates economic growth or whether the reverse causation is at play has spurred a great deal of attention over the years. A more [...]

A study is conducted to examine the relation ship between income and energy consumption in 11 major industrialized countries.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpolmod.2005.06.006 Byline: Sheng-Tung Chen, Chien-Chiang Lee Keywords: Government size; Economic growth; Threshold regression model Abstract: The Armey curve developed by [Armey, R. (1995). The freedom revolution. Washington, DC: Rognery Publishing Co.] and [Vedder, R. K., & Gallaway, L. E. (1998). Government size and economic growth. Joint Economic Committee] demonstrates that there is a non-linear relationship between government size and economic growth. In order to search for the threshold effects, this paper employs [Hansen, B. E. (2000). Sample splitting and threshold estimation. Econometrica, 68(3), 575-603] threshold regression model to test whether the Armey curve exists in Taiwan, allowing for endogenous government size thresholds. We apply the two-sector production function developed by [Ram, R. (1986). Government size and economic growth: A new framework and some evidence from cross-section and time-series data. American Economic Review, 76(1), 191-203] to construct the threshold regression model. Three classifications of government size are tested in sequence as threshold variables. The result indicates that all three classifications of government size have a threshold effect and that a non-linear relationship of the Armey curve exists in Taiwan. Author Affiliation: Department of Applied Economics, National Chung Hsing University, 250 Kuo-Kuang Rd. Taichung 402, Taiwan, ROC Article History: Received 1 October 2004; Revised 1 March 2005; Accepted 1 June 2005

Statistical analysis of relation between economic growth and social welfare, based on data pertaining to social security expenditure of Asian countries between 1972 and 2000, is presented.