Economic Analysis and Policy最新文献

Digital technology serves as a significant catalyst for green innovation (GI), intricately linked with policy guidance and strategic planning. Recently, a notable strategic approach fostering the evolution of digital technology is the establishment of Data Regulatory Bodies (DRBs). Leveraging data from 293 cities between 2010 and 2020, this paper employs a difference-in-differences methodology to investigate the impact of DRB establishment on GI. The results reveal a substantial increase in GI levels following DRB establishment. This enhancement is facilitated by improved administrative efficiency, the cultivation of digital finance, and the advancement of enterprise digitization. Furthermore, the effectiveness of these effects is optimized when DRBs are established through the integration of existing departments’ functions into a new department, particularly in cities with stable power and high marketization levels. These findings provide actionable insights for governmental initiatives aimed at fostering GI.

The digital economy is a novel catalyst for economic growth and sustainable development, representing an emerging trend in economic development. This study investigates the impact of the digital economy on green technology innovation within Chinese listed companies between 2009 and 2022. The empirical studies indicate the digital economy significantly promotes green technology innovation in corporations, especially in non-state-owned, large-sized, and mid-western companies. The analysis of the influence mechanism reveals that the digital economy has a substantial impact on the advancement of green technology innovation. This is achieved through alleviating financing constraints, promoting human capital agglomeration, and improving resource allocation efficiency. This research provides decision-making references for promoting green development and resolving the paradox of imbalanced and insufficient growth among companies with various ownership structures, total asset sizes, and regions.

China is undergoing a significant transition as it modernizes its energy consumption system and changes its approach to economic development. However, this transformation comes at the expense of environmental quality. The utilization of technological innovation has emerged as a significant catalyst for China's pursuit of environmentally conscious and sustainable development. Accordingly, this study utilizes panel data from 30 Chinese provinces spanning the years 1997–2021. The research employs the MMQR and BSQR to conduct an empirical analysis to find the influence of energy consumption (EC) and technological innovation (TI) on environmental degradation (ED). The findings of the research indicate that EC is a prominent manifestation of ED, while TI contributes negatively to ED. The inclusion of an interaction term suggests that the relationship between TI and ED can be influenced by the extent to which energy conservation and emission reduction are improved. The study's conclusion revealed that economic growth, population, and industrial structure are positively associated with CO₂ emissions in China. This study offers a set of recommendations for policymakers to formulate policies related to environmental quality.

Digital technology innovation has become essential to China's sustainable, low-carbon social development strategy. However, its spatial impact on carbon reduction and efficiency is unclear. This study innovatively utilizes patent search to define digital technology innovation and spatial econometric modeling to assess its association with total-factor carbon emission efficiency (TCEE) in 286 Chinese cities. There are some exciting research findings: (1) Digital technology innovation effectively accelerates local TCEE and contributes to TCEE in surrounding cities through spatial spillover effects. (2) The heterogeneous results show that digital technology innovation increases the local TCEE in the western region, inhibits the local TCEE in the eastern and northeastern areas, and shows apparent positive spillover effects in both the eastern and western areas; the positive effects of digital technology innovation on TCEE in non-resource cities and small cities are all-encompassing. (3) Both industrial structure upgrading and optimization can enhance the spatial spillover effect of digital technology innovation on TCEE; both formal and informal environmental regulations (ER) can effectively accelerate the TCEE enhancement effect of digital technology innovation on local and surrounding cities. (4) Digital technology innovation affects the TCEE of trading partners through domestic bilateral trade. This manuscript provides an actionable reference for measuring digital technology innovation and China's path to achieving an efficient low-carbon pathway.

This paper investigates sustainable household energy transitions including a reduction in kerosene lamp use and increases in solar home systems and solar lanterns. We use a large and detailed survey of around 9,000 households in northern India in 2015 and 2018. Our key analytical insights focus on inequality across economic and wealth distributions, including the lack of major distributional changes between the two survey waves. We find that a positive relationship between economic resources and solar home system use is driven by the upper end of economic distributions. Kerosene use is also substantially lower for the top of the economic distribution, especially in the 2018 survey. In contrast, economic resources have a weak relationship with solar lantern use. Future policies can be devised with reference to our results showing a more robust relationship between assets, rather than income, and household energy transitions. The stronger influence of assets is evident for a range of asset variables and for a composite wealth index which we construct. Detailed analysis of socio-economic distributions has value for informing policy attempts to target support to constrained households.

Employing the abolition of the agricultural taxes in 2005 in China as a natural experiment, this paper investigates the impact of local government fiscal stress on regional entrepreneurship. We find that the reform results in increased fiscal expenditure and decreased new firm entry. This result suggests that local government fiscal stress is a significant hindrance to regional entrepreneurship, particularly in areas with low fiscal self-sufficiency, limited financial development, and weak legal systems. We also explore the mechanisms through which agricultural tax abolition affects entrepreneurial activities. Our findings indicate that four mechanisms are effective in influencing entrepreneurship, including enhanced tax collection and management, increased local debt, rising land prices, and heightened uncertainty perception by entrepreneurs. Overall, our research provides new insights into the relationship between local fiscal stress and economic development from the perspective of regional entrepreneurship.

Using a panel vector autoregressive model, this paper assesses the impact of monetary policy on the Gini coefficient of disposable income for 30 OECD countries between 1995Q1 and 2019Q4. We assume house prices and household credit as transmission channels, representing households’ financial balance. To capture the effect of the financial crisis, the analysis further distinguishes the period that started in 2008Q4. We find that a contractionary monetary policy increases the Gini coefficient in a moderate way. For the entire period, house prices are an effective transmission channel, a positive shock decreasing inequality, while credit is not statistically significant. Following the crisis credit stands out as the transmission mechanism, a positive credit shock reducing the Gini coefficient, while house prices lose relevance. These results are robust to different model specifications.

Despite the energy-consuming rights trading (ECRT) as a policy practice to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the existing literature has not yet clearly revealed how it affects green technology innovation in the construction industry. Based on the panel data of 30 provincial-level administrative regions in China from 2010 to 2021, this paper empirically examines the impact and mechanism of the pilot ECRT policy on green technology innovation in the construction industry using the difference-in-differences (DID) method. The study shows that the ECRT policy significantly enhances green technology innovation in the construction industry in the pilot areas. Specifically, the level of green technological innovation in the construction industry in the pilot areas increased by 23.2 % after the implementation of the ECRT policy. Further mechanistic tests show that the ECRT policy promotes green technological innovation in the construction industry by increasing research and development (R&D) investment and upgrading the industrial structure. This paper assesses for the first time the impact of the ECRT policy on green technology innovation from the construction industry's perspective, providing a new perspective for assessing the impact of market-based environmental regulation. This paper is also highly significant for the government to enhance its policies on energy saving and pollution reduction.

Accelerating the penetration of digital technology into industrial transformation is an important concern for developing economies that dedicate to achieve high-quality development of foreign trade. Regarding China's pilot zones for integrating informatization and industrialization (PZII) as an exogenous shock of digital technology application, this study sheds light on effects of digital technology on domestic value-added ratio in export (DVAR) based on fine-grained firm-level data covering 2002–2013. Our finding reveals that digital technology improves firms’ DVAR, and the results remain consistent after conducting a series of robustness checks and addressing potential endogeneity. The heterogeneity analysis suggests that digital technology exerts significantly positive effects on DVAR of processing trade rather than general trade firms, foreign rather than domestic firms, and eastern rather than middle and western firms. The mechanism test discloses that digital technology positively affects DVAR through cost reduction effects and technology progress effects. Further investigation shows that market competition plays a positive role in moderating effects of digital technology on firms’ DVAR. Lastly, this study puts forward corresponding policy implications based on the conclusions.

This study investigates the impact of Korea's mandatory local-talent hiring policy on regional starting wage disparities between non-Seoul Metropolitan Area (non-SMA) and Seoul-based university graduates. We use a difference-in-differences approach with micro-level data from Korean university graduates between 2010 and 2019. Our findings demonstrate that the policy has significantly reduced wage disparities by creating demand for skilled graduates from non-SMA universities, particularly benefiting those from top-ranking institutions. This demand has driven them to enhance their educational standards, leading to improved rankings and average GPAs. Our mechanism analysis confirms that these improvements are crucial in narrowing wage disparities. Interestingly, the treatment effects are stronger for humanities graduates compared to those in science and engineering. These findings offer valuable insights for policymakers seeking to promote balanced regional development in similar contexts.