A Study of the Impact of the Digital Economy on the Efficiency of Urban Green Economy--Based on the Yangtze River Delta City Cluster

This paper adopts the non-expected output-super-efficiency SBM(Slacks-Based Model)model and principal component analysis to calculate the green economy efficiency and the digital economy level of 27 prefecture-level cities in China’s Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration between 2011 and 2019,respectively,and examines the impact of the digital economy on the green economy efficiency by using benchmark regression and mechanism analysis.The findings show that,first,the digital economy has a significant contribution to the green economic efficiency of cities,and this conclusion still holds after robustness tests such as replacing explanatory and interpreted variables and introducing province-fixed effects.Second,through the mechanism test,it is found that the digital economy can indirectly promote urban green economic efficiency through the positive mechanism effect of promoting industrial structure upgrading.

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.

Regional Economic Efficiency and Its Influencing Factors of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitans in China Based on a Heterogeneity Stochastic Frontier Model

Using a heterogeneity stochastic frontier model(HSFM),we empirically investigated the economic efficiency of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei from 2003 to 2016 and its influencing factors.The key findings of the paper lie in:1)in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei,the overall economic and technological efficiency tended to increase in a wavelike manner,economic growth slowed down,and there was an obvious imbalance in economic efficiency between the different districts,counties and cities;2)the heterogeneity stochastic frontier production functions(SFPFs)of Beijing,Tianjin and Hebei were different from each other,and investment was still an important impetus of economic growth in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei;3)economic efficiency was positively correlated with economic agglomeration,human capital,industrial structure,infrastructure,the informatization level,and institutional factors,but negatively correlated with the government role and economic opening.The following policy suggestions are offered:1)to improve regional economic efficiency and reduce the economic gap in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei,governments must reduce their intervention in economic activities,stimulate the potentials of labor and capital,optimize the structure of human resources,and foster new demographic incentives;2)governments must guide economic factors that are reasonable throughout Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and strengthen infrastructure construction in underdeveloped regions,thus attaining sustainable economic development;3)governments must plan overall economic growth factors of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and promote reasonable economic factors(e.g.,labor,resources,and innovations)across different regions,thus attaining complementary advantages between Beijing,Tianjin,and Hebei.