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China facing the challenge of coordinated development of "ecology, economy, and well-being". Scholars have conducted some research on the relationship between enviromental regulation and employment, but there is less research on the role of clean technology innovation in the employment effect of environmental regulation, which is the purpose of this paper. Using the panel data of 22 industrial sectors in China, the paper uses the number of clean technology patents to measure the level of clean technology innovation, and examines the moderating effect of clean technology innovation in the employment effect of environmental regulations. The results show that: (1) With the gradual improvement of environmental regulation, the impact of environmental regulation on employment presents the characteristics of inhibition first and then promotion. (2) Clean technology innovation has a moderating effect on the employment effect of environmental regulation. It should encourage the green upgrading of traditional technologies, support the development and optimization of private enterprises in various industries, so as to promote enterprises to effectively reduce pollution emissions and create jobs through green technology upgrading at the initial stage. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms of green finance on green innovation, focusing on their spatial and non-linear relationships. Using panel data of 30 provinces of China during the period of 2009–2017, a green finance index is constructed, and the spatial Durbin model and panel threshold model are used. The results reveal that: (1) Green finance and green innovation had significant positive autocorrelation, and the development of green finance in provinces of central and western China were still in the lower-level range. (2) The coefficients of the direct effect and indirect effect of green finance on green innovation were significantly positive, which indicated that green finance was conducive to enhancing green innovation in local and adjacent provinces during the research period. (3) Double threshold effects of green finance on green innovation were observed, which demonstrated that the driving effect of green finance was decreased with the raising of intensity of environmental regulation. The implication of these results is that government should make full use of the radiation and trickle-down functions of green finance and green innovation to narrow regional gaps in sustainable development while maintaining a moderate intensity of environmental regulation. • A green finance index of 30 provinces of China during the period of 2009 to 2017 was constructed on the basis of green credit, green securities, green insurance, and green investment. • The heterogeneity of region and time for green finance were analyzed employing the spatial exploratory analysis, which manifested that the spatial evolution of green finance in China presents a gradient decreasing pattern from east to west. • The impact of green finance on green innovation was explored by the spatial Durbin model, which proved that the direct effect and the spatial spillover effect were significantly positive. • Moderate intensity of environmental regulation helps green finance promote green innovation and this value should not exceed a maximum of 0.935. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments often turn to subsidies to boost enterprises' innovation activities, which gives subsidized enterprises room for allocating the subsidies among different innovation activities. Taking insights from institutional logic theory, this paper proposes that enterprises exhibit different subsidy-allocation behaviors between nongreen and green innovations and that the positive effect of subsidies on nongreen innovation is greater than that on green innovation due to the double-spillover problem that is pertinent to green innovation. Further, this paper argues that innovation intensity varies from privately-owned enterprises to local and central state-owned enterprises and that the underlying reason for this phenomenon is that enterprises with different ownership structures behave with different institutional logics, face different environmental and innovation pressures, and hold different innovative resource and capability endowments. We test these hypotheses by using longitudinal data (2010–2015) on 175 publicly-traded firms in the pharmaceutical industry in China. Overall, the results support most of the hypotheses. • The effects of governmental subsidies on green and nongreen innovations were examined. • The moderating role of ownership types between innovation subsidies and green/nongreen innovation was examined. • Five-year panel data from 175 publicly traded Chinese pharmaceutical firms were used to test the hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional finance has many deficiencies in promoting green technology innovation (GTI) and energy-environmental performance (EEP). The emerging digital finance is filling the gaps left by conventional finance with the support of information technology. Using panel data from 2011 to 2017, the paper explores the impact of digital finance on energy-environmental performance in China. The results show that digital finance significantly improves China's energy-environmental performance, which remains robust after a series of tests. Green technology innovation is the transmission path through which digital finance affects energy-environmental performance. The impact mechanism test proves that digital finance affects pure technical efficiency rather than scale efficiency. Furthermore, we also find that digital finance has a greater stimulus effect on energy-environmental performance where credit and capital markets are more immature. Financial supervision and environmental regulation from the Chinese government can reinforce the role of digital finance in promoting energy-environmental performance. Our study suggests that China should accelerate digitization in the financial markets, particularly in pursuit of its energy-saving and emission-reduction effects. • Digital finance can improve energy-environmental performance significantly. • The green technology innovation is the primary mechanism for the improvement of energy-environmental performance. • Instrumental variable, Semiparametric, DID models are employed to exclude endogeneity. • Credit and capital markets, financial and environmental supervision can reinforce the role of digital finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green technology innovation is the main driving force for sustainable development of China's strategic emerging industries. Improving the efficiency of green technology innovation is an effective way to achieve this developmental goal. The correct approach to measuring the efficiency of green technology innovation is a hot issue. Based on the panel data of China's 21 subdivided industries of strategic emerging industries over the period from 2004 to 2015, this paper applies the Malmquist index and data envelopment analysis to evaluate the efficiency of green technology innovation in strategic emerging industries. The empirical results show that changes in trends of technology innovation efficiency of strategic emerging industries are increasing, due mainly to technological progress and promotion of technology efficiency. Promotion of technology efficiency results from the joint action of pure technology efficiency increasing (0.1%) and scale efficiency increasing (0.2%). The change index of green technology innovation efficiency varies greatly in different industries, being highest (1.379) in communications switching equipment manufacturers and lowest (0.775) among office equipment manufacturers. There are three obvious troughs in the change index of green technology innovation efficiency over the period from 2004 to 2015. These troughs are declines of 19.5% in 2005, 16% in 2009, and 45.4% in 2012. • Construct the panel data by division of independent and imitative innovation input. • Establish Malmquist-DEA index to evaluate green technology innovation efficiency. • Analyze the key factors influencing green technology innovation efficiency empirically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]