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As a new economic paradigm, the digital economy is critical to economic growth and environmental protection. This paper empirically explores the impact of the digital economy on regional energy consumption intensity in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region from 2010 to 2018. It is found that the digital economy has a significant inhibitory effect on regional energy consumption intensity. This effect remains valid even after passing the endogeneity and robustness tests. The paper confirms that technological innovation is the primary means by which the digital economy affects energy consumption intensity. The analysis of spatial spillover effects shows that the digital economy promotes the improvement of energy consumption intensity in surrounding areas through technology spillover effects. A heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the technology spillover effect has a significant inhibitory effect on the energy consumption intensity of the surrounding areas for economically developed cities. Currently, the digital economy is a significant driver for enhancing productivity and quality. The integration and application of digital technologies have enabled technological innovation in the real economy, effectively reducing regional energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental friendly renewable energy plays an indispensable role in energy industry development. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in advanced renewable energy technology spillover is promising to improve technological capability and promote China’s energy industry performance growth. In this paper, the impacts of FDI renewable energy technology spillover on China’s energy industry performance are analyzed based on theoretical and empirical studies. Firstly, three hypotheses are proposed to illustrate the relationships between FDI renewable energy technology spillover and three energy industry performances including economic, environmental, and innovative performances. To verify the hypotheses, techniques including factor analysis and data envelopment analysis (DEA) are employed to quantify the FDI renewable energy technology spillover and the energy industry performance of China, respectively. Furthermore, a panel data regression model is proposed to measure the impacts of FDI renewable energy technology spillover on China’s energy industry performance. Finally, energy industries of 30 different provinces in China based on the yearbook data from 2005 to 2011 are comparatively analyzed for evaluating the impacts through the empirical research. The results demonstrate that FDI renewable energy technology spillover has positive impacts on China’s energy industry performance. It can also be found that the technology spillover effects are more obvious in economic and technological developed regions. Finally, four suggestions are provided to enhance energy industry performance and promote renewable energy technology spillover in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural emission reduction is a key objective associated with sustainable agricultural development and a meaningful way to slow down global warming. Based on the comprehensive estimation of agricultural carbon emissions, this study applied the traditional spatial Durbin model (SDM) to analyze the type of regional emission reduction interaction and explore whether it is a direct or an indirect interaction caused by technology spillovers. Moreover, geographic, economic, and technical weights were used to discuss the channels of emission reduction interactions. The partitioned spatial Durbin model was applied to explore the realization conditions of regional emission reduction interactions. We found that: (1) comprehensive emission reduction interactions were identified in various regions of China, including direct and indirect interactions, in which geographic and technical channels were the major pathways for direct and indirect emission reduction interactions, respectively; (2) regions with similar economic development levels are more likely to have direct interactions, whereas regions with low technical levels are more willing to follow the high-tech regions, and the benchmarking effect is noticeable; (3) emission reduction results promoted by economic cooperation may be offset by vicious economic competition between regions, and more emission reduction intervention measures should be given to regions with high economic development levels; (4) to achieve better technological cooperation, regions must have similar technology absorption capabilities and should provide full play to the driving force of technical benchmarks.

The relationship between environmental regulation, technology spillover, and economic performance has been the subject of intense scholarly debate in environmental economics for many years. The famous Porter hypothesis states that environmental regulation promotes both the economic performance and the environmental performance of corporations. However, the existing literature has paid relatively little attention to micro-level research and spatial spillover effects. This article endeavors to fill this gap by an empirical analysis of a sample of 900 of China's heavily polluting listed corporations for the period of 2013-2016. By utilizing spatial econometric methods to measure spatial direct and indirect effects and decomposing total factor productivity change into technical change, pure efficiency change, and scale efficiency change, we find that environmental regulation promotes corporate total factor productivity but widens the disparity between profitable and unprofitable corporations. Our results also suggest that the direct and indirect effects of environmental regulation and corporate profitability on promoting total factor productivity rely heavily on the efficiency changes, while the contribution of the key component, technical change, is insignificant.

China is in a strategic phase of an industrial green transformation. Industrial air pollution is a key environmental target for governance. Because import trade is a core channel through which advanced environmental protection technology is absorbed, the question of whether technology spillovers brought about by import trade can reduce industrial air pollution emissions is a topic worth exploring. This paper uses a generalized spatial two-stage least-square (GS2SLS) model to explore the impact of import trade technology spillovers on industrial air pollution emission intensities using panel data from 30 provinces and cities between 2000 and 2017. Economic scale, industrial structure, and technological innovation are used as intermediary variables to test whether they play mediating effects. The results show that: (1) capital and intermediate goods technology spillovers directly reduce industrial air pollution emission intensity and (2) import trade technology spillovers indirectly reduce emission intensities by expanding economic scale, optimizing industrial structure, and enhancing technological innovation through mediating variables. Furthermore, industrial structure optimization and technological innovation have the largest mediating effects on industrial SO2, while economic expansion has the most significant mediating effect on industrial smoke and dust. The mediating effects of technology spillovers from intermediate goods exceed those of capital technology spillovers. Finally, industrial air pollution emission intensity demonstrates both spatial agglomeration and time lag effects. Environmental regulations and energy structure are shown to increase industrial air pollution emissions, while urbanization and foreign direct investment reduce industrial air pollution. Based upon these research results, some pertinent policy implications are proposed for China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incentives are provided to attract multinational enterprises (MNEs) to host countries, with the expectation that their technology will spread to domestic firms. The purpose of this study is to examine how domestic firms benefit from the spillover of technology from MNEs. Using balanced panel data obtained from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, this study examined the impact of technology spillover through three channels: demonstration, competition, and worker mobility on productivity of domestic firms in Indonesia and Philippines. This study also explored the importance of domestic firms' absorptive capacity in capturing benefits from the three spillover channels. The Cobb–Douglas production model was used as the basis for the estimation model. A fixed-effect model for panel data analysis was used to analyze the data. The empirical outcome of this study revealed that worker mobility is the most viable channel of spillover in the two countries. It also showed that firms with high absorptive capacity were found to benefit from all the channels of spillover in both countries, while the firms with low absorptive capacity benefit differently in the two countries. Thus, this study validates the need for domestic firms to develop absorptive capacity in order to benefit from the technology spillover from MNEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]