Promoting or inhibiting? Green fiscal policy and urban green innovation

Can green fiscal policy(GFP)incentivize the proliferation of urban green innovation(GI)and be a novel cata‐lyst for energy conservation and emission reduction within the“dual-carbon”framework?This paper explores GFP ramifications for GI by implementing a difference-in-differences model in a natural experiment centered on the“Comprehensive Demonstration City of Energy Saving and Emission Reduction Fiscal Policies”.The em‐pirical analysis reveals several key findings:(1)GFP exhibits significant augmentation at the GI level,with an observable evolutionary trend of increasing marginal impact.Importantly,these outcomes withstand rigorous robustness tests,including propensity score matching.(2)A mechanism analysis elucidates the dual impact of GFP on GI growth.GFP directly fosters GI advancement indirectly by promoting talent aggregation,expanding scientific and technological investment,and attracting external financial resources.(3)A heterogeneity analy‐sis demonstrates that GFP enhancement of GI is closely associated with the patent category,manifesting a dis‐tinct pattern of“eastern region>other regions”and“non-resource cities>resource cities”.The study’s em‐pirical findings offer crucial real-world insights to guide the Chinese government in formulating a more effi‐cient GFP and facilitating the expansion of innovative endeavors while contributing to environmentally sus‐tainable and high-value development.

Are cities greener because of innovation?Independent innovation policy and green economic efficiency

The national independent innovation demonstration zone(NIIDZ)is an independent innovation policy that plays a crucial role in implementing strategies.Given the importance of the NIIDZ,this study uses panel data of 278 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2020 and empirically examines the effect and internal mechanism of the NIIDZ on green economic efficiency(GEE)using the difference-in-difference model(DID).The results show that the NIIDZ effectively enhances the growth of GEE,and the results remain valid through several robustness tests,such as year-by-year propensity score matching.The transmission mechanism suggests that the NIIDZ indirectly drives GEE by accelerating scientific and technological investment,promoting talent concentration,and optimizing the industrial structure.Moreover,heterogeneity analysis reveals that the promotion effect of the NIIDZ on GEE is more prominent in the eastern region and high green development level areas.The study’s findings can serve as a reference for China to further utilize the policy effectiveness of the NIIDZ and accelerate the high-quality development of the green economy in the future.

Transformation power or development pressure:economic growth targets and urban carbon productivity

Maintaining moderate economic growth targets(EGTs)is the key for local governments to effectively implement the“carbon peak and carbon neutrality”goals under the refreshed development pattern.Utilizing panel data of 276 prefecture-level cities in China's Mainland from 2010 to 2020,and employing methods such as intermediary and threshold models,this study empirically analyzes the internal mechanism of EGT’s impact on urban carbon productivity(UCP).Our findings demonstrate that:①The overall EGT during the analyzed period is not conducive to improving UCP.This conclusion remains valid after a series of robustness tests.This effect is more pronounced in the central region and resource-based cities than in the east-west region and non resource-based cities.②EGT not only directly suppresses UCP but also exerts indirect negative impacts on UCP from three aspects:delaying the digital economy(DE),constraining financial expansion(FE),and hindering green technology innovation(GTI).This negative indirect effect is similar to or even surpasses the direct effect,suggesting that the internal relationship between EGT and“dual-carbon”goals should be re-evaluated from a new compound perspective.③EGT not only has a simple linear impact on UCP but also significantly exhibits a dynamic evolution pattern in inverted“U”shape.That is,as EGT continuously upgrades,a nonlinear impact on UCP emerges in the form of“promoting first,suppressing later”.This indicates that surpassing the“degree”limit for EGT will be detrimental to the improvement of UCP.This study broadens the scope of carbon productivity analysis by introducing a new perspective centered on EGT.The insights gleaned from this research offer valuable guidance for local governments to effectively manage economic growth expectations and promote the synchronized achievement of dual-carbon objectives.