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Using the digital economy to empower urban economic green growth provides essential opportunities for China to achieve high-quality growth. This paper assesses the level of digital economy and green growth in Chinese cities, seeking to explore the mechanisms and effects of the digital economy on urban green growth in a unified framework. The results indicate that the digital economy can drive cities' green growth. This conclusion still holds after a set of robustness tests. Meanwhile, the green value of the digital economy is fully released among the eastern cities, major urban agglomerations, and high-level cities. Further research shows that the digital economy can indirectly enhance urban green growth in the neighboring regions through spatial spillover effects. Moreover, labor resource mismatch, capital resource mismatch and green technology innovation are significant mediating mechanisms. The findings could guide policymakers on green growth in emerging economies from a digital economy perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's extensive economic growth has been accompanied with high levels of pollution, and excessive energy consumption has brought serious pollution problems. The use of financial resources to regulate green production modes and encourage high‐quality economic development has become a major focus in academia. At the same time, growth enterprise market (GEM) enterprises, which mainly operate in technology‐intensive industries, are assumed to have a simulating effect on regional innovation. Therefore, this paper utilizes the capital return differences of 4437 listed companies and 920 GEM companies based in 30 provinces of China from 2008 to 2018 to quantitatively analyze the levels of financial misallocation. With two‐stage regression method, the direct effect of financial misallocation on regional green total factor energy efficiency (GTFEE) and the indirect impact observed when taking regional innovation as an intermediary variable are discussed. Furthermore, dynamic threshold panel regression and heterogeneity analysis are used to verify the above nonlinear relationship. The empirical findings indicate that financial misallocation enhances innovation capability and further restrains GTFEE. With an improved degree of marketization and environmental regulation, the inhibitory effect of financial misallocation on GTFEE is more significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on emergy theory, this paper calculates the agricultural green GDP of China and its provincial units from 2003 to 2018. Following this, the spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors of the economic growth of green agriculture in China are studied using the spatial analysis method. The results show that: (1) Compared with the traditional GDP derived from agriculture, the per capita green agriculture GDP growth in China is relatively slow, and the proportion of green agriculture GDP to the traditional GDP from agriculture is between 85 and 91%, which shows a downward trend. (2) The economic growth of China's green agriculture manifests significant spatial agglomeration, with gradually growing effects. (3) The per capita GDP of green agriculture has not broken the overall pattern of high economic growth in China's eastern regions and low growth in the western. According to the results, the major cause of this spatial pattern lay in the higher efficiency of agricultural production in the eastern, economically more developed areas, and the relatively less efficient mode of production in the western areas. (4) A region's level of economic development, technological innovation, infrastructure investment and openness were found to have a positive impact on the growth of green agriculture within it. In previous research, emergy methods have not been applied to study the economic sectors in China, the largest developing country in the world, especially in the agricultural sector. Only few studies report on the analysis of spatial characteristics and factors influencing the growth of green agriculture. The agricultural green GDP was calculated based on the emergy analysis method. The temporal and spatial characteristics, as well as the driving factors of green agriculture GDP, were analyzed under the full consideration of the spatial correlation, which contributes to the theoretical explanation of spatial agglomeration of economic factors in spatial economic theory. The conclusions provide a theoretical and practical basis for accurate evaluation of the green growth of China's agricultural economy, optimization of the spatial structure of the country's green agricultural economy and coordination of the development of green agriculture in different regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry is supported by smart and green manufacturing, which have great potential to empower the nation's green development. This study examines the impact of the Made in China 2025 industrial policy on urban green economic growth. This study applies the super-slacks-based measure model to measure cities' green economic growth, using the double machine learning model, which overcomes the limitations of the linear setting of traditional causal inference models and maintains estimation accuracy under high-dimensional control variables, to conduct an empirical analysis based on panel data of 281 Chinese cities from 2006 to 2021. The results reveal that the Made in China 2025 strategy significantly drives urban green economic growth, and this finding holds after a series of robustness tests. A mechanism analysis indicates that the Made in China 2025 strategy promotes green economic growth through green technology progress, optimizing energy consumption structure, upgrading industrial structure, and strengthening environmental supervision. In addition, the policy has a stronger driving effect for cities with high manufacturing concentration, industrial intelligence, and digital finance development. This study provides valuable theoretical insights and policy implications for government planning to promote high-quality development through industrial policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have revealed that developing green technology innovation is extremely important for minimizing haze pollution. However, limited by serious endogenous problems, research rarely focuses on the effect of haze pollution on green technology innovation. Based on a two-stage sequential game model including both production and government departments, this paper mathematically deduced the effect of haze pollution on green technology innovation. Then China's central heating policy is considered a natural experiment in our study to verify whether haze pollution is the key factor affecting the development of green technology innovation. The result that haze pollution significantly inhibits green technology innovation is confirmed, and this negative impact is mainly concentrated on substantive green technology innovation. Robustness tests have been performed, and the conclusion is still valid. Moreover, we find that government behavior can significantly affect their relationship. Specifically, the government's economic growth target will increase the haze pollution's ability to block the development of green technology innovation. However, if the government has a clear environmental target, their negative relationship will weaken. Based on the findings, targeted policy insights are presented in this paper. • Introducing a two-stage sequential game model and mathematically deduced how haze pollution affects green innovation. • China's central heating policy is considered a natural experiment. • The result that haze pollution significantly inhibits green technology innovation is confirmed. • The economic and environmental target constraints affect the impact of haze pollution on green technology innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the shortage of resources and the increasingly serious environmental pollution in China, green innovation has become a sustainable competition for a region. The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) strategy is one of the most important strategies for the sustainable development of China's economy under the new normal. Green innovation plays a linking role in the resources exchange and trade flow in YREB, and it is also the foundation and guarantee to implement the YREB strategy. The global environmental pollution and the weak recovery of world economy make the traditional extensive economic growth model unsustainable. Sustainable economic growth should focus on the quality of development and its external costs to the environment. In order to implement the concept of sustainable development, the improvement of logistics ecological efficiency is related to the quality of ecological civilization construction. Therefore, it is of theoretical and practical significance to study the measurement, evolution, and driving factors of coordinated development level of regional green innovation system. This paper proposes a super-slack-based measure (super-SBM) data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to measure the green innovation efficiency of 11 provinces and cities in YREB from 2008 to 2017, mastering its spatial and evolutionary characteristics, and conduct empirical analysis on the influencing factors. The empirical results indicate that economic development, government support, and industrial structure upgrading are the leading forces to directly enhance the green technology innovation ability of cities in the Yangtze River Economic belt and play the core driving role of green innovation. To further enhance the capacity of urban green innovation in the Yangtze River Economic belt, we will increase the government's support for green innovation, optimize the environmental governance model, promote the green upgrading of industrial structure, and enhance the enthusiasm of enterprises for green innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A new approach to research on the green transformation of EU countries was proposed. • A profound analysis of current level of green transformation in EU was conducted. • Development patterns of green transformation of EU countries were described. Green transformation has become one of the most important directions in the further development of the world. It involves the development of green technologies and the creation of legal regulations enforcing, for example, saving energy or reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as any other activities aimed at changing society's attitude towards the acceptance of – frequently more expensive but more environment-friendly – technological solutions and legal norms. Thus green transformation can be defined as combining economic growth with caring about the environment in order to guarantee a high quality of life for present and future generations at the level which is attainable due to civilisational development, as well as to an effective and rational use of the available resources. Still, there is no single globally accepted way to this transformation. It is proceeding in a variety of ways and depends on many different factors. The main purpose of the paper is a comparative analysis of the directions of changes occurring in the process of green transformation in EU countries. The added value of the research presented in the paper and its novelty is the analysis of the current patterns of green transformation in EU countries. The paper concentrated on recognizing them and drawing attention to the unfavourable directions of this transformation as well as to its positive aspects. The changes in the process of green transformation were analysed based on data used by the OECD to describe green growth in two periods: 2004 or 2005 as initial data and the last available data (usually 2018 or 2019). For this purpose the TOPSIS method was applied. The EU countries were divided into groups according to their way of applying green transformation. The provided research allows to better understand the course of this transformation in various EU countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital economy has demonstrated strong resilience and great potential, under the interwoven influence of the global pandemic and severe environmental concerns across the world. Therefore, there is a need to focus on the value of green economic growth in the digital economy. This paper constructs an evaluation index system and adopts the SEEA (System of Environmental and Economic Accounting) method to measure the digitalization level (Digi) and green economy growth level (GEG) of China. The internal mechanism and linear relationship between digitalization and green economy growth are examined based on the panel data from 2013 to 2019. Moreover, this study explores the spatial spillover effect. The major study findings are as follows: (1) Digitalization and green economy growth represent a steady growth trend, and the former as a whole significantly promotes the latter, with a marginal effect of 1.648. (2) The mechanism analysis indicates the intermediary effects' size of three crucial intermediaries: green technology innovation > advanced industrial structure > the rationalization of industrial structure. (3) Both the "local effect" (0.556; 0.574) and "neighboring effect" (1.382; 1.415) of digitalization on green economy growth are positive under the two weight matrices and display "simultaneous resonance" characteristics based on the spatial perspective. (4) There exists obvious regional spatial heterogeneity and resource endowment heterogeneity. Finally, this study put forward corresponding policy implications, such as construction of new digital infrastructures and guiding green-energy consumption. • The green economic growth (GEG) level is measured by the SEEA method. • The linear relationship shows digitalization (Digi) can significantly promote GEG. • The spatial effect of Digi on GEG shows "positive simultaneous resonance". • Three crucial intermedia's effects are compared. • The heterogeneous impact is explored from different dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a new form of industrial organization, there is still a lack of research on how industrial symbiotic agglomeration affects green economic growth. To fill this research gap, this paper analyzes the impact mechanism of industrial symbiotic agglomeration on green economic growth from the perspective of energy efficiency, waste recycling, and green technology innovation. Based on the data of Chinese cities from 2004 to 2019, we use the spatial difference-in-differences approach for empirical testing. The research concludes: (1) Industrial symbiotic agglomeration can both significantly promote green economic growth and have a spillover effect on neighboring cities. (2) The specific spillover effects are divided into three cases. Diffusion effect (within 150 km), siphon effect (150 km–750 km), no significant spatial effect (over 750 km). (3) The promotion and spillover effects of industrial symbiotic agglomeration on green economic growth can only be brought into full play when a certain threshold is reached. The local promotion effect requires the area of the symbiotic agglomeration area to be greater than 106 km2, while the spillover effect requires a larger scale (greater than 393.2 km2) for it to manifest itself. This has theoretical and practical significance for promoting green growth and achieving sustainable development through symbiotic agglomeration. • For the first time, we analyze the impact mechanism of industrial symbiotic agglomeration on green economic growth from the perspectives of energy efficiency, waste recycling and green technology innovation. • For the first time, the impact of industrial symbiotic agglomeration on green economic growth is quantitatively analyzed. Industrial symbiotic agglomeration can both significantly promote green economic growth and have a spillover effect on neighboring cities. • The specific spillover effects are divided into three cases. Diffusion effect (within 150 km), siphon effect (150 km-750 km), no significant spatial effect (over 750 km). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although green growth has become the economic development strategy of many countries in the world, and studies have analyzed the influencing factors of green growth from multiple angles, there are few literatures devoted to the impact of fintech and green finance on green growth. From the perspective of fintech development, this paper tries to construct a comprehensive index to evaluate the green growth of regional economy based on the in-depth analysis of the influence mechanism of green finance on green growth. At the same time, China's provincial panel data from 2011 to 2018 are selected to test the impact of fintech innovation and green finance on green growth, and its mechanism. It turns out that fintech and green finance significantly promotes green economic growth. At the same time, the impact of fintech and green finance on green growth has obvious regional heterogeneity, that is, the impact in eastern China is significantly stronger than that in central and western China. Further research shows that fintech innovation mainly promotes green economic growth through green credit and green investment. Therefore, fintech innovation can promote green economic growth by improving the development level of green finance, which has great reference significance for most countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental policies are a significant driver of change towards the achievement of sustainability. Policies impact on the environment through direct and indirect effects. Indirect effects pertain to the effect of innovation and invention mechanisms. The paper analyses those direct and indirect effects by focusing on different measures of environmental productivity. Econometric analysis on a long macroeconomic panel dataset is used to convey original insights, and as a platform for policy assessments. Results show that environmental policies adopted by countries may boost environmental productivity performances both directly and indirectly, through innovation, across various environmental dimensions. The increasing stringency of environmental policy, which has been observed over the last decades, is a crucial driver of change for climate actions, waste and resource efficiency, touching upon various SDGs related to responsible consumption and production, economic growth, industry and innovation infrastructures and climate action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Providing more affordable and cleaner energy for all raises complex and significant financial, political, technical, and institutional issues, which must all be addressed to ensure sustainable development. Energy technology innovation has a critical role to play as one of the best pathways to achieve the transition to a global clean energy system. This paper is an endeavor to study the impact of government energy technology research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) budget, which is the primary input of energy technology innovations on cleaner energy supply and carbon footprints (CFP). In this study, a cleaner energy supply is measured as the contribution of renewable energy to total primary energy supply (RE). We assumed that the effect of energy innovation is not uniform but varies according to the descending and ascending movements in a government's energy technology RD&D budget. To this end, we distinguished the impact of the descending and ascending movements in government energy technology RD&D budgets on cleaner energy supply, and CFP in Europe over the period 1985 to 2016. Additionally, we carried out a comparative examination of the effects of energy technology RD&D expenditures on RE and CFP under both linear and nonlinear panel techniques. To increase room for policy implications, we also controlled for the role of economic growth and trade openness and performed several robustness check analyses. We found that the reduction of carbon footprints associated with an increase in public support to energy technology RD&D is more pronounced than the contribution of energy technology innovation to the deployment of renewable energy in Europe. This study provided little evidence in favor of the effectiveness of a government energy technology RD&D budget to substantially boost renewable energy in Europe. Following these results, we suggest that the knowledge of the asymmetric linkage between public energy technology innovation, RE, and CFP is a starting point to achieve win-win solutions that favor clean energy and environmental sustainability. • Optimizing the nonlinear effects of energy technology RD&D budgets over different time horizons. • Asymmetries in the responses of RE and CFP to shocks in energy technology innovation budgets. • The influences of energy technology innovation vary over different time horizons. • The public budget devoted to energy innovation is fundamental for curbing CFP rather than boosting RE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]