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Policy synergy is a unique way for the government to establish a policy network and a crucial way for cities to expand their carbon reduction channels. Using urban data from China, this paper empirically investigates how environmental governance policy synergy (EGPS) affects carbon emissions. In comparison to non-pilot cities, the environmental information disclosure (EID) policy and low-carbon city (LC) policy play an inhibitory role in carbon emissions. Furthermore, EGPS has a stronger effect and is heterogeneous by region. Through the use of technical advancement and industrial structure optimisation, EGPS lowers carbon emissions, and this effect of EGPS grows over time in tandem with the level of environmental pollution in the cities. Our paper proposes policy implications in order to improve the overall effect of environmental governance policy and help achieve the dual carbon targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of significant environmental changes, the urgency of adopting green innovation has become increasingly apparent as a central mechanism for adjusting industrial structures in China. This transition serves not only as a crucial way to address pressing environmental challenges, but also as a fundamental strategy to improve the ecological efficiency of urban areas. Existing research mainly keeps a close eye on the unidirectional relationship between variables such as technological innovation and environmental protection. There is less relevant literature that has researched the cointegration relationship among green innovation, industrial structure, and eco-efficiency of cities. The essential role of green innovation and industrial structure in reaching a higher eco-efficiency of city are discussed in this research and the relationship among these three variables are analyzed by the evidence from cities in China from 2011 to 2019. The fact that the variables are cointegrated in the long run is evidenced by the results for the full sample. The sub-sample results report that in the eastern region, green innovation, industrial structure upgrading, and industrial structure rationalization could improve urban eco-efficiency. However, in Midwest regions where economic development is relatively backward, green innovation's effect on urban eco-efficiency is not in a significant positive way. The results obtained in this paper have implications for different cities in China to formulate corresponding policies on green innovation, industrial structure, and urban eco-efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-quality innovation is the crucial way to promote corporate sustainable development. This paper explores the effect of fiscal decentralization on corporate innovation quality with hybrid data during 2006–2019. The findings show that fiscal decentralization can promote corporate innovation quality in China. This paper carries out various robustness tests, and the results remain consistent with the previous conclusion. The findings also suggest that fiscal decentralization can do better in promoting corporate innovation quality in higher-administrative-level cities, eastern regions, technology-intensive industries, and large-scale enterprises. Furthermore, this paper reveals that business cycle plays a moderating role in how fiscal decentralization affects corporate innovation quality, and the promotion effect is stronger in booms than in recessions. The findings also indicate that promotion incentive positively moderates the enhancement effect of fiscal decentralization on corporate innovation quality, while market integration negatively moderates this relationship. This study sheds new light on how fiscal decentralization affects corporate innovation quality, which is helpful for the government to promote high-quality innovation and corporate sustainable development in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To cope with the severe challenges related to traditional economic-centered urbanization, the Chinese government has proposed a people-oriented new-type urbanization strategy, which focuses on promoting the coordination and sustainable development of the environment, economy, and society. The existing literature has studied the impact of traditional urbanization on energy use but has not yet revealed the mechanisms and effects of the new transformation of urbanization on energy efficiency. Based on socio-economic-natural complex ecosystem theory, this paper systematically explains how new-type urbanization affects energy efficiency. By adopting a newly developed dynamic panel threshold model, the paper examines the complex impact of new-type urbanization on energy efficiency using panel data of 285 cities in China from 2003 to 2017. The results show that new-type urbanization has a significant double-threshold effect on energy efficiency. As the new-type urbanization level increases, the improvement effect of new-type urbanization on energy efficiency presents the change features of "strong-weakened-stronger." The heterogeneity analysis shows that under the constraints of multiple factors, such as new-type urbanization stages, geographic regions, economic development levels, and resource endowment, the impact of new-type urbanization on energy efficiency varies significantly. Targeted and differentiated policy recommendations for promoting new-type urbanization and energy efficiency are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions and climate change risk have become constraints on global economic sustainable development. Environmental regulation (ER) is a key method for achieving synergy in CO 2 and pollution reduction in China. This paper is the first study to explore the effects of ER on CO 2 emissions by exploiting the National Environmental Protection 11th Five-Year Plan (NEP11-FYP). The implementation of the NEP11-FYP significantly decreases CO 2 emissions by 19.73% in key environmental cities relative to other cities. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that this negative impact is larger in western cities and cities with more pressure to reduce CO 2 emissions. Scale effects, structural effects, and technical effects might be three potential influencing channels through which ER contributes to the CO 2 reduction effect. In addition, the results of the spatial externality of the NEP11-FYP demonstrate a positive spillover effect in neighboring cities within a distance of 300 km and a negative spillover effect in cities more than 500 km away. Our empirical findings provide policy implications for implementing low-carbon transition strategies and reducing CO 2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the pillar industry of China's national economy, the service industry has always experienced a lag in structural upgrading. As an important measure of China's institutional innovation, China's Free Trade Zone (FTZ) policy is of great significance for promoting the development of the service industry. Based on the panel data of 185 prefecture-level cities in China from 2010 to 2019, this paper empirically tests the impact of the FTZ policy on the upgrading of service industry structure by using the progressive difference-in-differences model. The results show that the FTZ policy can promote the upgrading of service industry structure, and the effect is enhanced with the extension of time. The heterogeneity test shows that the impact of the FTZ policy on the structural upgrading of the service industry is mainly reflected in promoting the development of the information service industry as well as the leasing and business service industry. The transmission mechanism test shows that the FTZ policy can promote the structural upgrading of the service industry by improving the level of trade facilitation and investment facilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on the panel data of 284 Chinese prefecture level and above cities span 2010 to 2019, systematically investigated the relationship between digital economy and air pollution, with introducing difference-in-differences model, mediating effect model, and spatial difference-in-differences model, as well as treating the "National Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Area" policy as a quasi natural experiment. Finally, results show that:(1) Digital economy does negatively affect air pollution, in particular the industrial dust, followed by industrial sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide. All these benchmark results have withstood the robustness test. (2) Almost all the mediating roles of industry structure upgrading, industry intensive development, and online life in the relationship between digital economy and air pollution have been confirmed, except it is partly absent in the digital economy-industrial dust nexus and the digital economy-industrial sulfur dioxide linkage. (3) Negative spatial spillover effect is evident between digital economy and air pollution, regardless of involving the neighboring pilot cities or the non pilot cities. (4) The passive air pollution effect of digital economy varies with the regional distribution, administrative scale, marketization level, and government competitiveness. All these findings shed new lights on government intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China plays a significant role in the global product supply chain through its exports. To remain competitive, Chinese firms need to manufacture products cost-effectively. Revamping innovative cities can contribute to this goal, but empirical evidence in this area is limited. Therefore, this paper scrutinizes the innovative city pilot policy's consequences on firms' export performance and product quality. We employ the time-varying Difference in Difference (DID) model and harness a comprehensive firm-by-product level database to estimate the co-movement between the pilot intervention and the performance of the export product. Based on the findings, we unveil that a smart intervened city can significantly boost firms' export product quality, which still holds after multiple robustness checks. Furthermore, innovative cities heighten the quality of the manufactured products when we consider firm-level (i.e., private, foreign, and ordinary trade enterprises), industry-level (i.e., low-polluting, capital-intensive, and technology-intensive industries), and regional (i.e., Middle, and Western regions) heterogeneities. In addition, the intervened smart city strategy impacts the efficacy of export product quality through policy and innovation-driven effects. Over and above, policymakers and experts should support state-of-the-art ideas while considering local conditions, providing guidance for decision-making in China's innovative development strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of temporary migration on land transfer (land renting) using a conceptual framework and empirical analysis based on nationally representative data from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey. Our key findings indicate that temporary migration significantly and negatively affects land transfer-out, after accounting for potential endogeneity issues using the PSM and 2SLS methods. Specifically, migrants with temporary intentions are at least 5.85 percentage points less likely to transfer-out land than their permanent counterparts. We also find that the adverse effect of temporary migration on land transfer is more pronounced in larger cities but diminishes over time as migrants stay longer. Furthermore, we observe that permanent immigrants are more likely to transfer land to acquaintances than strangers, whereas temporary immigrants are more likely to cultivate the land. Our results have significant policy implications for agricultural productivity and rural rental land market in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the background of China's high-quality economic growth with total factor productivity (abbreviated as TFP) growth as a key driver, this study attempts to integrate heterogeneous industrial agglomeration, innovation agglomeration, and institutional distance into the theoretical analysis framework of urban green total factor productivity (abbreviated as GTFP). The impact and effect of industrial agglomeration on urban GTFP growth, and the moderating role of innovation agglomeration and institutional distance in the above effects are examined empirically. The findings indicate a significant inverted "U" relationship between the three types of industrial agglomeration and urban GTFP growth. From the critical values, the three types of industrial agglomeration do not cross the critical value on the whole, showing the promoting effect on the growth of urban GTFP. Under the different types of city divisions (small, medium and large cities, east-central-west cities, and north-south cities), the effect of the three types of industrial agglomeration on GTFP growth in different types of cities has typical heterogeneity. Innovation agglomeration and institutional distance play a positive regulatory role in the impact of industrial agglomeration on the growth of urban GTFP. It is further found that innovation agglomeration plays a threshold role in the impact of industrial agglomeration on urban GTFP, i.e., the positive contribution effect of three types of industrial agglomeration on urban GTFP growth gradually increases with the increase of urban innovation agglomeration. This paper introduces the research results of industrial agglomeration on urban GTFP and provides policy implications for improving GTFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralization has always been considered the reason local governments in China lack incentives for green development. Whether conferring honorary titles can motivate the competition mode of local governments to shift to low-carbon sustainable development is a scientific problem worth studying. In this paper, the civilized city policy is taken as a quasi-experiment, and its effect is evaluated using the method of difference-in-differences. The results show that civilized city policy can effectively promote the improvement of green total factor carbon efficiency. The mechanism is that the policy encourages local governments to mobilize multiple actors to participate in green development practices including strengthening local governments' environmental control, promoting the technological innovation of enterprises, and increasing public participation in environmental affairs. Heterogeneity analysis of local government incentives shows that the civilized city policy is more effective in cities where local officials are less than 54 years old and the city GDP growth rate is midstream in the province. The study confirms that awarding honorary titles to cities in China can effectively guide local governments toward a sustainable development model and provides new ideas for other countries in the world to use local policies to address global climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green innovation is an important driving force for sustainable development. However China often imposes a wide variety of government regulations on green innovation One important reason behind these government regulations is the confinement of the cultural market. However, does this confinement actually affect the green innovation in China? By employing a 278 Chinese cities' dataset, we examine the effect of cultural reform pilot project on green innovation. Through the spatial difference-in-difference approach with the time trend, our results show that cultural reform pilot project (CRPP) is a significant determinist affecting the green innovation in China. Specifically, implementing CRPP promote green innovation in pilot cities which resulting from labour productivity exaltation, marketization rate increasing. The CRPP also have a spatial ripple effect which resulting from economic density promotion. Furthermore, the green innovation promotion is greater in cities which participating into World Technopolis Association, being included in the National Historical and Cultural Cities List and having high political hierarchy. Our conclusions still robustness after adopting a series of tests and alternative analyses. This paper not only provide evidence for the further implementation of cultural reform pilot project nationwide, but also provide policy implications on sustainable development in the post Covid-19 era. • Based on the theory of economic geography and the perspective of deregulation. • Examine both the direct and indirect effects of CRPP on green innovation via SDID approach. • Implement CRPP promotes green innovation both in pilot cities and neighbouring cities. • CRPP exalt ate labour productivity, increase marketization rate and promote economic density. • Effect of CRPP on green innovation exhibits heterogeneity on cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the idea of shift-share analysis, where local inflation is decomposed into the national factor, structural stickiness (with sectoral and regional aspects), and a localized pricing power effect in order to gain a better understanding of the inflation dynamics. We apply price-level data in China as a dual economy, which has historically been separated into urban and rural areas. The results show that sectoral differences in inflation are the most important factor explaining inflation in China, while local pricing power must be seriously considered in many sectors in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]