Zhizhong Liu

With the improvement of the technology level and the prevalence of the concept of environmental protection, green finance has been gradually applied to the field of production and economic development. As an important measure of economic development, the export sector is inevitably affected by the development of green finance. However, using the high technology of exports to analyze the relationship between green finance and exports has not drawn much attention. Based on the panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2020, this study empirically examined the impact of green finance as well as export technology complexity, by using a combination of fixed effects and mechanism analysis. The results show that green finance has a significantly positive impact on export technology complexity, which means that an increase in the depth of green finance can improve export product quality. In terms of regional heterogeneity, the impact of green finance on the high technology of exports is greater in the eastern region than in the central and western regions of China. In terms of the manifestation of green finance, the effect of green bonds on export technology complexity is greater than that of green investment and insurance. Green finance improves the export technical complexity through three intermediaries, such as green technology innovation, capital investment strength, and product upgrading capacity. This study highlights the importance of green finance and provides new methods for governments to assist in the formulation of policies that can improve export technology complexity.

The development trend of deepening regional trade agreements (RTAs) is becoming more prominent, traditional RTAs based on border terms continue to shift to deep RTAs based on the high level of border terms and a series of post-border terms, but the relationship between deep RTAs and residents’ health has not drawn much attention. Based on Gallup World Poll data from 2009 to 2017 covering 786,040 respondents in 143 countries, this study empirically examined the impact of deep RTAs on the health of residents as well as its influence mechanisms by using the combination of fixed effects and stepwise regression. The results show that deep RTAs have a significantly positive impact on residents’ health, which means that an increase in the depth of RTAs can improve residents’ health. However, the impact of deep RTAs on residents’ health is heterogeneous, caused by the different terms of RTAs, the different income levels of different countries, and the different types of residents. Meanwhile, deep RTAs mainly improve the health of residents through employment effects and environmental effects. This study highlights the importance of deep RTAs for improving the health of residents and provides new ideas for governments to assist in the formulation of policies that can effectively improve their residents’ health.

Nowadays, public health issues are increasingly in the spotlight, and the role played by foreign direct investment (FDI) cannot be ignored, especially in developing countries. Scholars have discussed the influencing mechanism of FDI on public health from both positive and negative aspects, but there is little literature focused on the impact of FDI’s green technology spillovers. This paper explores the impact of spontaneous green technology progress induced by FDI, i.e., FDI’s green technology spillover effect, on the public health status of China. It constructs a theoretical model based on the cost discovery theory and uses the Global Malmquist–Luenberger Method to calculate the green technology spillover index; then, it empirically researches the impact of this spillover effect on public health based on the Grossman health product function, using Chinese provincial data from 2007 to 2019. After a series of robustness tests, this paper also discusses the regional heterogeneity and the influencing mechanism. The main conclusions are as follows: Firstly, there is a significant negative correlation between FDI’s green technology spillover and infant mortality, indicating that the spillover effect significantly promotes China’s public health. Secondly, the results of regional heterogeneity show that the spillover effect of green technology presents a decreasing trend from east to west regions. The threshold effect test results also show that, when the level of economic development is extremely low or exceeds a specific threshold, FDI’s green technology spillover will have a positive impact on public health. Finally, FDI’s green technology spillover improves public health by controlling environmental pollution and optimizing industrial activities, but it does not worsen public health by increasing income inequality. The conclusions of this paper provide empirical support and policy suggestions for rationally and effectively utilizing FDI to promote China’s public health in the future.