Songping Zhu

Since the 2008 financial crisis, EPU has become an important issue for the stable and healthy development of the economy and society. The existing research has not analyzed the nonlinear impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on output at the industrial level, and it has also ignored the regulatory role of technological progress in the impact of EPU on economic growth. Based on panel data of China’s industry from 2005 to 2017, this paper makes an empirical analysis on the nonlinear impact of EPU on industry output. The results show that: (1) Different from the existing research, this paper finds that EPU has a significant inverted “U”-type nonlinear effect on industrial output, and when the EPU index is close to 221, this is best for output growth. This paper firstly finds that technological progress has a positive regulatory effect in the impact of EPU on industrial output. Technological progress can promote industrial output when EPU is low, and it can reduce the adverse impact of economic policy fluctuations when the EPU index is high. (2) The regulatory effect of technological progress only exists in the industries dominated by state-owned enterprises, and the impact of EPU on the output of non-state-owned enterprises’ leading industries is greater than that of state-owned enterprises. (3) The impact of EPU on the output of cyclical industries shows a significant inverted “U” shape, but there is no regulatory effect of technological progress. Its impact on the output of noncyclical industries is not significant, but it will work together with technological progress. (4) The influence of EPU on the output of the tertiary industry is characterized by an inverted “U” shape, in which technological progress can play a positive regulatory role. However, its impact on the output of primary and secondary industries is not significant.

The uncertainty of economic policy, a specific form of uncertainty, can affect both economic growth, and the effectiveness of the macroeconomic regulation and control policy. Existing studies have analyzed the impacts of economic policy uncertainty on investment, consumption, trade, and total factor survival, but there is no analysis of the effectiveness of macroeconomic regulation and control policies on output and technological progress in a deterministic environment. Output growth and technological progress show the performance of economic growth in gross and efficiency, respectively, which is the external performance and internal driving force of economic growth. To achieve long-term sustainable economic development, it is necessary to consider both the aggregate problem and technological progress. In this context, this paper attempts to explore the effectiveness of China’s macroeconomic regulation and control policy on output growth and technological progress under the economic policy uncertainty. Specifically, this paper first analyzes the effectiveness of macroeconomic regulation and control policy on China’s output growth and technological progress in an uncertain environment, and then makes an empirical study by constructing a time-varying parameter vector autoregression model (TVP-VAR). Furthermore, the simulation test of the relevant results is carried out using the counter-fact analysis method. The empirical results show that: (1) under the uncertainty environment, the direction of the effect of price monetary policy on output has not changed, the effect of interest rate increase on output growth is negative, and the impact is stronger in the short term than in the medium and long term; the effect of rising interest rates on technological progress is positive, and the effect intensity is also significant in the short term, but weak in the medium and long term, the effect of price monetary policy on output is stronger under moderate uncertainty. (2) Credit growth can promote output growth, and the regulation effect of credit growth on output growth is mainly reflected in the short term under the TVP-VAR model, the effect of credit growth on technological progress is not significant. Further research using counterfactual analysis shows that the uncertain environment will reduce the effect of credit policy on output growth, but the effect is not significant.

The reverse technology spillover effect of Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) has been widely discussed. In the context of pursuing green growth, a few scholars began to study the impact of OFDI on home country green technological progress or green total factor productivity. However, few of these papers have made a thorough analysis of how OFDI affects the home country’s green technological progress, and have not considered the impact of different types of OFDI on green technological progress. This paper extends the basic analysis framework of technological progress to green technological progress, and discusses for the first time the ways for China to invest in developed and developing countries to achieve green technological progress. Specifically, this paper combines the global Malmquist productivity concept with the directional distance function to construct the global Malmquist Luenberger (GML) index to describe green technological progress of China’s provinces, and uses panel data model from 2003 to 2016 to study the impact of China’s investment in different types of countries. The results show that: (1) China’s investment in developed countries can bring reverse green technology spillovers and promote China’s green technology progress. But this is also affected by China’s domestic human capital stock, the increase in human capital stock is conducive to the absorption of green technology. (2) OFDI flows to transition or developing countries have failed to bring about green technological progress, but domestic R&D capital stock can produce a control response. (3) Environmental regulation, import trade and domestic R&D capital stock can bring positive effects on green technology progress, while foreign direct investment, fiscal decentralization and economic growth hinder green technology progress. (4) There is regional heterogeneity in the impact of OFDI with different directions on green technological progress. Because of environmental regulation and economic development, the eastern region of China is easier to obtain reverse green technology progress than the central and western regions in the process of OFDI.

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.