China’s Energy Economy: A Survey of the Literature

This paper reviews literature on China’s energy economics, focusing especially on: i) the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth, ii) China’s changing energy intensity, iii) energy demand and energy -capital and -labor substitution, iv) the emergence of energy markets in China, vi) and policy reforms in the energy industry. After reviewing the literature, the study presents the main findings and suggests some topics for further study.China; Energy; Literature

Analysis of Regional Differences and Influencing Factors on China’s Carbon Emission Efficiency in 2005–2015

With the challenge to reach targets of carbon emission reduction at the regional level, it is necessary to analyze the regional differences and influencing factors on China’s carbon emission efficiency. Based on statistics from 2005 to 2015, carbon emission efficiency and the differences in 30 provinces of China were rated by the Modified Undesirable Epsilon-based measure (EBM) Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Model. Additionally, we further analyzed the influencing factors of carbon emission efficiency’s differences in the Tobit model. We found that the overall carbon emission efficiency was relatively low in China. The level of carbon emission efficiency is the highest in the East region, followed by the Central and West regions. As for the influencing factors, industrial structure, external development, and science and technology level had a significant positive relationship with carbon emission efficiency, whereas government intervention and energy intensity demonstrated a negative correlation with carbon emission efficiency. The contributions of this paper include two aspects. First, we used the Modified Undesirable EBM DEA Model, which is more accurate than traditional methods. Secondly, based on the data’s unit root testing and cointegration, the paper verified the influencing factors of carbon emission efficiency by the Tobit model, which avoids the spurious regression. Based on the results, we also provide several policy implications for policymakers to improve carbon emission efficiency in different regions

Regional environmental efficiency and economic growth: NUTS2 evidence from Germany, France and the UK

This paper by applying nonparametric techniques measures spatial environmental heterogeneities of 98 regions from Germany, France and the UK. Specifically environmental performance indexes are constructed for the 98 regions (NUTS 2 level) identifying their ability to produce higher growth rates and reduce pollution (in the form of municipal waste) generated from regional economic activity. By applying conditional stochastic kernels and local constant estimators it investigates the regional economic activity – environmental quality relationship. The results indicate several spatial environmental heterogeneities among the examined regions. It appears that regions with higher GDP per capita levels tend to have higher environmental performance.Regional environmental efficiency; directional distance function; conditional stochastic kernel; nonparametric regression

Climate Change: National and Local Policy Opportunities in China

Climate Change poses a wide range of potentially very severe threats in China. This aggravates the existing vulnerability of China and is one of the big challenges faced by the Chinese government. Adaptation programmes and projects are being developed and implemented at national and local level. As China is engaged in heavy investment in infrastructure development as a consequence of the rapid process of development and urbanization, mainstreaming adaptation into such development process is a priority for China. China has also made positive contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions through participations in the CDM under the Kyoto Protocol framework. Although mitigation is not a priority at national or local level, it has been integrated into national and local development plans explicitly. This paper addresses the following questions: What is the policy space for climate change mitigation and adaptation policy at national and local level and what is already being done? The three case studies at local level - Beijing, Guangdong and Shanghai – presented here, highlight the local benefits in terms of local pollution of integrating mitigation policies into local development. However, financial constraints usually prevent such a positive policy integration. National policies and international cooperation aiming at bridging the financial gap and promoting technology transfer would help in integrating local pollution control and mitigation efforts in China today.Climate Change, Local Policy, National Policy, Mitigation, Local Pollution

On the road to prosperity? The economic geography of China's national expressway network

Over the past two decades, China has embarked on an ambitious program of expressway network expansion. By facilitating market integration, this program aims both to promote efficiency at the national level and to contribute to the catch-up of lagging inland regions with prosperous Eastern ones. This paper evaluates the aggregate and spatial economic impacts of China's newly constructed National Expressway Network, focussing, in particular, on its short-run impacts. To achieve this aim, the authors adopt a counterfactual approach based on the estimation and simulation of a structural "new economic geography" model. Overall, they find that aggregate Chinese real income was approximately 6 percent higher than it would have been in 2007 had the expressway network not been built. Although there is considerable heterogeneity in the results, the authors do not find evidence of a significant reduction in disparities across prefectural level regions or of a reduction in urban-rural disparities. If anything, the expressway network appears to have reinforced existing patterns of spatial inequality, although, over time, these will likely be reduced by enhanced migration

The Evolution of Income Inequality in Rural China

We document the evolution of the income distribution in rural China, from 1987 through 1999, with an emphasis on investigating increases in inequality associated with transition and economic development. With a backdrop of perceived improvements in average living standards, we ask whether increases of inequality may have offset, or even threaten welfare gains associated with economic reforms. The centerpiece of the paper is an empirical analysis based on a set of household surveys conducted by the China’s Research Center for Rural Economy (RCRE) in Beijing. These surveys permit us to construct a set of comparable estimates of household income and consumption from a panel of over 100 villages from nine Chinese provinces. We provide a variety of summary statistics, including Gini coefficients, as well as more nonparametric summaries of the income distribution (i.e., Lorenz curves). In addition, we decompose the sources of inequality, exploring the contributions of spatial inequality to overall inequality, and the role of non-agricultural incomes in explaining rising dispersion of incomes. We find that the distribution of income improved by most measures during the early part of the period, as average incomes rose substantially with only a modest increase in inequality. However, the distribution has worsened significantly since 1995, with rising inequality, and falling absolute incomes, especially at the bottom end of the income distribution. We attribute most of the recent decline in welfare to collapsing agricultural incomes, probably brought about by lower farm prices. At the same time, increasing non-farm incomes have widened the gaps between those with and without access to nonagricultural opportunities. Based on explorations with different data sets, our RCRE-based results probably understate the divergence due to non-agricultural income growth and the increase in inequality over time. Our results highlight the need for further evaluation of the role of farming as a source of income in the countryside, and also underline the limitations of a land-based (and essentially grain-based) income support and redistribution mechanisms.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40040/3/wp654.pd

Research on Evaluation of Regional Ecological Innovation Efficiency in Anhui Province

With the development of technology, the negative effects brought about by innovation have become more and more attractive. But there are few studies on the relative efficiency of input and output in a region. Since the input and output of a region are multidimensional variables. Therefore, this paper adopts the DEA method, first analyzes 16 cities in Anhui Province without environmental pollution index, and finds that Hefei is in an inefficient region with decreasing scale. Under the same input, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of technology input. After introducing the environmental index, Hefei has reached the effective input standard, and four cities have not reached the effective decision-making unit. Among them, Maanshan, Xuancheng and Anqing are in the stage of increasing returns to scale. For these three regions, technology investment can be increased. . Based on the results of the above data analysis, the corresponding measures are proposed and the direction of policy designation is indicated. Keywords: ecological innovation; efficiency; environmental pollution index; Anhui DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/87-07 Publication date:July 31st 2019

Regional efforts to mitigate climate change in China: A multi-criteria assessment approach

The task of mitigating climate change is usually allocated through administrative regions in China. In order to put pressure on regions that perform poorly in mitigating climate changes and highlight regions with best-practice climate policies, this study explored a method to assess regional efforts on climate change mitigation at the sub-national level. A climate change mitigation index (CCMI) was developed with 15 objective indicators, which were divided into four categories, namely, emissions, efficiency, non-fossil energy, and climate policy. The indicators’ current level and recent development were measured for the first three categories. The index was applied to assess China’s provincial performance in climate protection based on the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. Empirical results show that the middle Yangtze River area and southern coastal area perform better than other areas in mitigating climate change. The average performance of the northwest area in China is the worst. In addition, climate change mitigation performance has a negative linear correlation with energy self-sufficiency ratio but does not have a significant linear correlation with social development level. Therefore, regional resource endowments had better be paid much more attention in terms of mitigating climate change because regions with good resource endowments in China tend to perform poorly