What causes dynamic change of green technology progress: Convergence analysis based on industrial restructuring and environmental regulation.

• Green technology progress (GTP) of yellow river economic belt is measured by slacks-based DEA model. • Effects of industrial restructuring and environmental regulation on GTP are analyzed by convergence model. • Industrial restructuring and environmental regulation respectively have positive effect on GTP. • The positive effect of industrial restructuring reduces with the increase of environmental regulation. • Fiscal decentralization is main transmission channel for above results. Using 57 city-level panel data of Yellow River Economic Belt from 2004 to 2018, this paper investigates the effect of industrial restructuring and environmental regulation on dynamic change of green technology progress (GTP) by convergence models. Industrial restructuring is divided into rationalization and advancement industrial structure. Concretely, δ convergence results present that GTP values of different cities do not converge to steady state, but absolute β convergence results show that GTP growth rate of different cities will reach to a certain steady-level. In addition, the estimation results verify the existence of GTP conditional β convergence. Rationalization industrial structure, advancement industrial structure, and environmental regulation respectively have significantly positive effect on GTP, but the positive effects of rationalization and advancement industrial structure reduce with the increase of environmental regulation. Moreover, fiscal revenue decentralization and fiscal expenditure decentralization are important transmission channels through which industrial restructuring and environmental regulation affect GTP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]