Accounting and determinants analysis of China's provincial total factor productivity considering carbon emissions

By Yuning Gao, Meichen Zhang, Jinghai Zheng. 2020

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Abstract One of the most undesirable output of China's rapid economic growth has been increasing carbon emissions. This study measures and analyzes the impact of carbon emissions on China's regional total factor productivity from 2000 to 2017. Using Global Malmquist-Luenberger productivity indexes, we re-estimate the provincial level of total factor productivity taking carbon emission into account, comparing the different assumption of return to scale and considering the rank reverse issue. Besides, the differences of technical progress and efficiency change across Chinese regional economies are also investigated that the former is the primary contributor to ameliorate Chinese provincial productivity performance. In addition, we analyze the influencing variables of provincial productivity based on the panel data model. Our results indicate that innovation capacity, energy and employment structure, have significant impact on the provincial productivities while urbanization shows more challenge to this new measure. By expanding regional investment in R&D, adjusting and optimizing structures of regional industries and energies, a more sustainable development can be expected.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ac9ff9114adf09eddc0f6494673e51aeb6dcd907