Han Zhang

Urban energy transitions depend on recombining cross-boundary technologies, a process fundamentally catalyzed by institutional opening. Treating the 2013 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) node designation as a quasi-experiment across 282 Chinese cities (2006–2022), this study evaluates the causal effects, technological paths, and spatial boundaries of institutional opening on energy-transition efficiency (ETE). We identify three core dynamics. First, BRI-induced opening robustly improves urban ETE, yielding pronounced dividends in Central Western regions, Silk Road nodes, and cities exhibiting strong green-development willingness but lower talent-attraction intensity. Second, opening drives efficiency leaps primarily by expanding technological innovation capacity and fostering technological diversification, rather than deepening technological specialization. Externally, robust intellectual property protection mitigates the policy-induced contraction of technological specialization, while escalating geopolitical risks paradoxically reinforce the transmission efficacy of technological diversification. Third, despite positive overall ETE co-movement, local BRI exposure triggers significant “near-neighbor siphoning.” This spatial displacement is network-bounded: under trade-gravity weights, siphoning attenuates within a 400–600 km radius, whereas transportation corridors induce “long-arm polarization,” squeezing peripheral cities across extended distances. Ultimately, this study clarifies the structural tension between localized green dividends and spatial siphoning, providing vital micro-level evidence for cross-regional collaborative governance.

Standardization governance profoundly reshapes environmental innovation by driving institutional interoperability, knowledge codification, and voluntary compliance. Exploiting China ' s National Standardization Reform Pilot (NSRP) as a quasi-natural experiment, we leverage a staggered difference-indifferences (DID) design across 278 cities (2012-2022) to evaluate its causal impact on urban green innovation (UGI). Baseline estimates demonstrate that this institutional reform significantly catalyzes UGI, yielding magnified dividends in jurisdictions characterized by advanced economic development, elevated standardization priority, stringent environmental oversight, and quality-oriented governance. Transmission mechanisms reveals that standardization accelerates UGI primarily by optimizing resource allocation efficiency-a pathway robustly moderated by intellectual property protection-while simultaneously fostering talent agglomeration and activating regional technology markets. Crucially, estimations across multiple spatial matrices, complemented by dynamic distance profiles, uncover robust spatial spillovers of NSRPinduced UGI across geographic proximity, economic association, transport association, and joint green technology linkages. Although peaking within immediate physical proximities, these environmental dividends decisively reject a uniform spatial decay pattern; they also propagate through economic and transport networks, reaching geographically distant but functionally interconnected policy hubs. Ultimately, these findings illuminate the vital role of harmonized institutional frameworks in dismantling cross-jurisdictional frictions, accelerating regional knowledge diffusion, and driving sustainable urban transitions.

A critical question in evaluating urban agglomeration policies is whether regional integration translates core-city digital dominance into broad-based growth and regional convergence. Using the successive enlargement s of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper employs a balanced panel of 284 Chinese cities (2003-2022) to estimate these effects. Through comprehensive difference-indifferences , event study, mechanism analysis, and spatial models, we demonstrate that YRD enlargement significantly elevates the urban digital-economy index (UDEI) and reduces the relative digital-economy gap (UDEG), a conclusion supported by extensive robustness checks. The dividends of enlargement are particularly salient in cities characterized by stronger entrepreneurial vitality, more polycentric structures, higher digital-economy attention, and earlier accession cohorts. Furthermore, causal mediation analysis reveals that the of knowledge breadth reorganization and new-technology space reorganization drives this digital catch-up. Moderation analyses reveal that local absorptive capacity-specifically, superior talent-capital matching and technological proximity-amplifies the digital dividends of YRD enlargement. Spatial analysis reveals that YRD enlargement generates a short-range local-shadow effect on UDEI, whereas its effect on neighboring UDEG is only directional. By contrast, digital institutional proximity produces significant convergence-oriented spillovers in UDEG. Ultimately, this study advances the literature by shifting the focus from average growth outcomes to the nuanced distributional, competitive, and spatial dynamics of urban digital transformation

I. Climate change has become one of the most severe challenges to global sustainable development, posing significant threats to human health and ecological integrity (Campbell-Lendrum et al. 2023)....

The global pursuit of sustainable development highlights the pivotal role of intellectual property protection (IPP) in fostering both economic growth and environmental sustainability, especially in developing nations. This study investigates the impact of IPP on green total-factor energy efficiency (GTFEE) using panel data from 284 prefecture-level and above cities in China spanning 2006 to 2020. Leveraging the 2012 launch of the National Intellectual Property Demonstration Cities (NIPDC) initiative as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ a multi-period difference-in-differences framework combined with mediation analysis. This study finds that enhanced IPP significantly improves urban GTFEE, particularly in non-western, resource-constrained, and less innovative cities, as well as in the early NIPDC pilot cohorts. Mechanism analysis indicates that improved green innovation quality mediates the positive effect of IPP on GTFEE, while constraints in industrial structure optimization serve as a negative mediator. Ultimately, these results underscore the pivotal role of IPP in facilitating energy transitions, offering actionable policy insights for reinforcing IPP frameworks to drive green growth in developing economies.

Public data access (PDA) is critical for addressing environmental challenges and promoting green development. Against the backdrop of digital transformation empowering environmental governance, this study treats China`s Open Government Data Initiative as a quasi-natural experiment and constructs a time-varying difference-in-differences model using panel data from 287 Chinese prefecture-level cities spanning 2005 to 2021 to examine the impact of PDA on synergistic haze reduction and carbon mitigation (HR&CM). The findings reveal that PDA significantly curtails urban haze pollution and carbon emission intensity while enhancing their synergistic governance. Mechanism tests based on the replicated output confirm a robust mediating role for data elementalization, whereas the environmental-regulation channel is not supported. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the effects are strongest and most robust in medium-sized cities. The synergistic HR&CM effect remains positive across both weak and strong digital-infrastructure groups, whereas the interaction evidence is limited and concentrated mainly in carbon mitigation. These results clarify the internal logic of PDA as a catalyst for urban HR&CM and provide updated empirical support and policy insights for China and other developing nations seeking to modernize environmental governance through digital means.

Standardization acts as a key driver of governance and production efficiency, playing a crucial role in fostering green innovation. Treating China’s National Standardization Reform Pilot (NSRP) as a quasi-natural experiment, this study investigates this relationship using a staggered difference-in-differences framework on a panel dataset of 278 prefecture-level cities from 2012 to 2022. The empirical results demonstrate that the NSRP exerts a robust positive causal effect on urban green innovation, characterized by an inverted-U dynamic trajectory. Heterogeneity analyses reveal a pronounced non-monotonic size effect: the policy yields substantial innovation dividends for small and medium-sized cities but exhibits a null effect in large cities due to the potential crowding out of endogenous innovation. A moderated mediation model further establishes that the NSRP drives green innovation primarily by optimizing resource allocation efficiency and secondarily by stimulating regional innovation activity. Notably, the strength of intellectual property protection exerts asymmetric moderating effects, dampening the resource-allocation channel while amplifying the innovation-activity channel. This study provides rigorous empirical evidence that standardized governance acts as a critical catalyst for green transformation, offering valuable policy implications for tiered institutional design and optimal factor reallocation in developing economies aiming for sustainable growth. JEL Codes ：O31; Q55; Q58; R11

Environmental information disclosure, a key tool in modern environmental governance, drives green technology innovation and sustainable development. In this study, we examined how air information disclosure, induced by the issuance of China’s Ambient Air Quality Standards (AAQSs), drives urban sustainable development (USD) through environmental information disclosure. Using a multi-period difference-in-differences model and panel data from 278 cities (2005–2022), we analyzed causal effects, mechanisms, and urban heterogeneity. The findings offer insights for leveraging disclosure to advance urban sustainability. The results showed that AAQSs’ implementation significantly increases USD. Mechanism analysis revealed two mediating pathways: stimulating green technological innovation and enhancing governmental environmental concern. Climate policy uncertainty positively moderates this relationship. Heterogeneity analysis revealed stronger impacts in non-provincial capital cities, non-resource-dependent cities, and regions with weaker sustainable development foundations. The findings provide empirical evidence for leveraging information disclosure to promote green transitions and strengthen environmental concerns.