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Industry is the largest sector for energy consumption and pollution emissions in China. Thus, improving industrial eco-efficiency is necessary for China to achieve sustainable development. Based on panel data from 31 industrial sectors from 2001 to 2015, a three-stage data envelopment analysis model was used to empirically explore industrial eco-efficiency and its influencing factors from the perspective of industrial heterogeneity. The results show that the overall level of industrial eco-efficiency in China is not high, first declining and then rising during the study period. Low eco-efficiency was mainly due to low scale efficiency. After removing the influences of external environmental factors and noise, industry profit rates, ownership structures, and foreign direct investments were all significantly and positively correlated with eco-efficiency. Environmental regulations were significantly and negatively correlated, while the intensity of research and development exhibited no linear relationship. Industrial heterogeneity significantly affects eco-efficiency. Capital-intensive industries had the highest eco-efficiencies, followed by resource-intensive industries and labor-intensive industries, respectively. Comparison of technical efficiency (TE) before and after adjustment on a panel of 31 industries in China from 2001 to 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We construct a metric of geoeconomical distance from international investment and world trade to assess the risk of interstate conflict. Geoeconomical distance measures the mutual excessive acceptance of investments and exports between two countries. We show that a country's distance to the US and China is a significant predictor of its involvement into interstate conflict(s). Splitting the sample into two periods, we find that countries approaching China at the cost of their proximity to the US are confronted with significantly higher risk of interstate conflict in the early post-Cold War period, as are countries located at the outskirts of the unipolar system as measured by their distance from the US. In the later period, a country's concurrent motion toward China and away from the US, unlike the earlier period, does not increase its risk to be involved in interstate conflict(s). Furthermore, countries located at the periphery of the nascent Sino-US bipolar system have lower geopolitical risk than those residing close to their respective centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]