Azhong Ye

To investigate Chinese residents’ consumption capacity and consumption upgrading, this study uses the Moran index, the Dagum Gini coefficient method, and the SPVAR model to analyze the spatial-temporal differentiation and interactions between the two; the entropy method is employed to measure the development level of both factors. As per the results, from 2008 to 2020, the levels of consumption capacity and consumption upgrading have increased rapidly and are distinctly unbalanced, but there is a clear trend of convergence between the developments in each province, and both show spatial agglomeration, mainly in the “high–high” and “low–low” clusters. The “high–high” clusters are primarily concentrated in the more economically developed eastern coastal and central fast-rising regions, with inter-regional differences being the main reason for the regional differences between the two. In terms of spatial interaction, the two are Granger causalities, with positive feedback effects that promote each other, and have a “center–periphery” spatial spillover effect, where the center generates spatial spillover and also suffers reverse shocks from the periphery, while the shock effect is limited by inter-provincial economic ties and geographical distance.

To explore the relationship between consumption upgrading and agricultural green total factor productivity in the context of green and high-quality development of agriculture in China. Based on the construction of a composite index of consumption upgrading and the Malmquist index of non-expected output in the SBM-DEA model to measure agricultural green total factor productivity, this paper uses the PVAR model and panel data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2008 to 2020 to empirically analyze the mechanism of the effect of consumption upgrading on agricultural green total factor productivity under high-quality development. The results are as follows: (1) Both the real economy and consumption upgrading are ahead of the change in agricultural green total factor productivity and have a negative short-run impact on agricultural green total factor productivity but a continuous boosting effect in the long-run. (2) In terms of specific impact paths, the real economy boosts agricultural green total factor productivity through technical efficiency and technical change paths and has a negative impact through scale efficiency, whereas consumption upgrading has inhibitory and sustained promotional effects in the short- and long-run, respectively, through technical efficiency and technical change paths and has opposite impact effects in the scale efficiency path.

Investment in China’s transport infrastructure has contributed to its rapid economic growth, which also consumes a great deal of energy and generates a significant amount of carbon emissions. In these circumstances, it is worthwhile to discuss the internal influence mechanisms behind these two outcomes’ similar growth trends. This paper selects panel data from 30 regions in China from 2009 to 2019 and uses the threshold spatial autoregressive (TSAR) model to analyze the impact of transport infrastructure investment on the energy intensity due to fiscal decentralization. While studies of the relationship between transport infrastructure investment and energy intensity exist, few studies examine the non-linear spatial relationship between the two. This paper fills this gap by using the TSAR Model. The results show the following: (1) the effect of transport infrastructure investment on the energy intensity under fiscal decentralization and heterogeneity expresses non-linear characteristic; (2) there is a positive relationship between infrastructure investment and energy intensity when the degree of attenuation is low, but when the degree of attenuation is higher than a particular threshold value, transport infrastructure investment negatively impacts energy intensity; (3) rising energy prices, increasing investment in technological innovation costs, and increasing foreign trade will help to drive the decline in energy intensity.

Internet business adoption is an essential determinant of regional innovation which has received little attention in the literature. This paper emphasizes the role and threshold effect of Internet business adoption in increasing regional innovation outputs. We construct a threshold spatial autoregressive model to illustrate the nonlinear positive impact of Internet business adoption on innovation, simultaneously estimating interregional knowledge spillovers. To test threshold effect and interregional knowledge spillover, we use province-level panel data set in China and calculate Moran’s I and LR-like statistics to confirm the nonlinearity and spatial dependence. Within the empirical model, we find a positive relationship between the number of websites owned by local firms and the number of patents filed in that specific region. Our analysis suggests that Internet business adoption has a greater marginal benefit on the innovation of isolate regions. The results also indicate that ignoring interregional knowledge spillover may cause mistakes in the model on regional innovation systems. Policy implications for these results suggest that the government should not only pay attention to Internet development of the whole country but also encourage the reduction of digital divisions among regions

Most previous articles estimate the effects of information communication technologies (ICTs) on economic growth average using national data without consideration of heterogeneity of ICT effects on cities across multiple economic development. The heterogeneity of ICT effects is confirmed to promote both the sustainability and equitableness of the whole cities. In order to investigate the heterogeneous effects of ICT between developed and less developed cities, a quantile spatial autoregressive (QSAR) model is applied to estimate coefficients at different quantiles while accounting for the spatial dependence of urban economy. We find significantly positive effects of ICT in local and neighboring cities after controlling the spatial dependence of urban economy. We have further found larger coefficients of ICT-related variables in cities with lower gross domestic product (GDP) per capital suggesting that digital dividend from ICT prefer the less developed cities over developed cities. Our conclusions indicate there would be “double dividend” from ICT, namely an improvement of both overall economic growth and balanced economic development among cities.

Inclusive green growth is a sustainable development mode in pursuit of economic growth, social equity, and environmental protection. At present, a large number of articles have discussed the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth, green growth, and inclusive growth. However, the research about inclusive green growth is mainly descriptive. This paper constructs China’s inclusive green growth index and analyzes the impact of FDI on inclusive green growth in China. Specifically, by constructing a super efficiency slacks-based measure model (which has two undesirable outputs: income disparity and environmental pollution) to calculate the Inclusive green growth index, this paper compares and analyses the differences and regional characteristics of China’s total factor productivity, inclusive total factor productivity, green total factor productivity, and inclusive green total factor productivity. We find that total factor productivity is decreasing after considering undesirable output, and the traditional total factor productivity is higher than the inclusive green total factor productivity by 0.112; at the regional level, the trend of the total factor productivity is gradually decreasing from east to west, which indicates that there are regional differences in inclusive green growth of China, and there is room for improvement. Meanwhile, we construct a panel vector autoregressive model (PVAR) and use generalized impulse response function and variance decomposition to analyse the influence of FDI on China’s inclusive green total factor productivity. The results show that FDI is beneficial to the promotion of inclusive green total factor productivity in China, and environmental pollution in the FDI process is an important factor hindering the inclusive green total factor productivity.