China & World Economy最新文献

This study investigated the impact of environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements on the greening of Chinese firms' exports using data from the Trade and Environment Database, the Chinese Customs Database, and the Annual Survey of Industrial Firms for 2000–2014. These provisions significantly boosted firms' shares of clean exports and reduced shares of dirty exports. Pollution intensity weakened this effect but productivity strengthened it. Heterogeneity tests indicated stronger effects for technology-related provisions than trade-related ones, and more pronounced impacts on domestic firms and those located in regions with advanced green innovation capacity and environmental governance. The study extended the trade effects of environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements to the micro level and offered novel evidence for the Porter hypothesis in the context of international environmental regulation. It also provided empirical support for China's efforts to promote the greening of trade.

China implemented its Action Plan of Air Pollution Prevention and Control (APAPPC) in 2013 as a major step in national air-quality management. This study treated the APAPPC as a quasi-experiment, drawing on the Grossman and Cropper models, to examine how air pollution affected individual health capital and medical service demand. Using panel data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study for 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2018, the analysis applied a Heckman two-stage model and difference-in-differences estimation to identify the policy's effects on medical expenditure. The results showed that the APAPPC significantly reduced annual health spending, with stronger effects among women, older adults, and rural residents. The mechanism analysis indicated that the reduction in respiratory diseases played a key role. This study provides evidence that supports further air-pollution control in China and offers useful insights for other developing countries.

This study used four United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) indicators as dependent variables and examined the effects of green growth and the digital economy on these indicators for a panel of 72 countries between 2003 and 2019. Using the generalized method of moments, the analysis showed that green growth and the digital economy have driven the renewable energy transition in a sustainable development framework. Foreign direct investment was found to have negatively moderated the relationships between green growth and the SDG7 indicators, and between the digital economy and the SDG7 indicators. The results remained consistent in signs when alternative variable proxies and estimators were applied. Heterogeneity analysis indicated that green growth and the digital economy affected SDG7 positively across different income groups and regions. These results suggest that policymakers should focus on green growth and digitalization while considering the role of foreign direct investment inflows.

Designing policies for the cement industry's low-carbon transition is challenging due to provincial differences. This study combined a multiregional computable general equilibrium model with the energy–economy–environment–sustainability–strategy–stability (3E3S) method to assess the effects of policy scenarios involving carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes on provincial economies, the environment, carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, urban–rural income gap, the construction industry, and 3E3S subsystems. The results show that both the impacts of carbon tax and emissions trading schemes on provincial GDP are negative. As tax rates rise, carbon intensity in the cement industry decreases, boosting CCS technology adoption, especially in provinces where cement production is concentrated. These policies also intensify the urban–rural income gap, although tax rebates can partially offset their negative effects, and influence the construction industry through the supply chain. Variations in economic levels, technological development, and urban–rural income gap among provinces significantly influence the coordinated development of the 3E3S subsystems.

This study examined the inflationary effects of rising temperatures by linking monthly climate variables with consumer price data for 30 large- and medium-sized Chinese cities from January 2004 to December 2019. Lagged one-period temperature had a significant positive effect on current-month price changes. The cumulative estimates indicated that each 1 °C increase during the sample period was associated with a 0.057 percent rise in prices, implying that temperature shocks contributed to consumer price inflation. Mechanism tests showed that higher temperatures reduced output growth and raised production costs, and that greater economic policy uncertainty amplified these effects. When different temperature bins were used as explanatory variables, prices increased linearly with temperatures up to 25–30 °C, then declined at higher temperatures. Temperature effects were stronger in poorer or cooler regions. The findings suggest the need to strengthen monetary policy responses, expand mitigation efforts, and develop climate-adaptive urban systems.

Existing literature supports combining green research and development (R&D) subsidies and carbon taxation for economic sustainability, but often assumes an exogenous labor supply. This overlooks key interactions, especially regarding existing subsidies for traditional R&D sectors, common in developing countries focused on growth. This paper introduces a variety-expansion endogenous growth model featuring endogenous labor supply and stochastic components. It analyzes how labor supply endogeneity and the level of existing brown sector support influence the optimal mix of green R&D subsidies and carbon taxation, deriving closed-form solutions: when labor supply is endogenous, the relationship between the optimal carbon tax and green R&D subsidies can be complementary or substitutive, depending on the level of labor disutility. It also investigates how the optimal climate policy mix should change when a social planner emphasizes a faster green transition. The model is calibrated using data from China, and numerical results validate the paper's theoretical insights.

This study examined the environmental consequences of administrative decentralization by focusing on China's town power expansion reform as a quasi-natural experiment. Using firm-level panel data for Zhejiang province from 2001 to 2013, it employed a difference-in-differences approach to assess the causal impact of decentralization at the town level on firm pollution emissions. The results indicated that this form of decentralization led to a significant 19.1 percent increase in firm-level pollution, primarily driven by intensified economic competition and tax competition, expanded firms' output, and declined energy efficiency. These findings highlight the complex relationship between administrative decentralization and environmental governance, underscoring the potential unintended consequences of granting more autonomy to lower-level governments. This study thereby contributes to the debate on the relationship between decentralization and pollution.

The irreversible trend of rising temperatures is accelerating the reshaping of the international trade landscape. This study empirically examined the impact of temperature variation on the scale of international trade using data on Chinese listed firms' import and export and annual temperature changes in Chinese cities and trade partners from 2000 to 2016. The results indicated that temperature changes in firms' headquarter cities and in trade partners were significantly and negatively associated with the scale of imports and exports. Firms' operational capabilities in home country and meteorological disasters in trade partners were key channels through which temperature variation affected trade outcomes. The negative effects of temperature fluctuations in both locations were stronger for heat-sensitive firms, non-state-owned firms, firms with high research and development investment, and firms trading with low-income partners. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between climate volatility and international trade.

This study examined how domestic environmental demand can influence countries' participation in global value chains (GVCs) in the environmental sector, including waste management, pollution control, and environmental protection services. Using a crosscountry dataset, a measure of environmental demand was constructed based on population exposure to PM_2.5 concentrations exceeding 10 μg/m³. The results show that a 1 percent increase in relative domestic environmental demand increased GVC participation, raising relative production length by 0.125 percent in forward-linked GVCs and by 0.175 percent in backward-linked GVCs. Two mechanisms were identified: an intermediate climbing effect, through which higher domestic demand promoted upstream integration, and an induced innovation effect, through which larger market scale stimulated technological advancement. These findings indicate that countries with substantial environmental pressures and large domestic markets can leverage domestic environmental demand to enhance their positions in global environmental value chains and support green development.