The impact of the digital economy (DE) has become the important faction of the market volume of domestic non-tradable sectors (DNSs). As rising digitalization supersedes traditional market power as a driving force, there is increasing concern about the volume of trade and economy; however, the literature of how the DE procession changed the DNS’s are limited, although the Chinese government is eager to enlarge the scale of the domestic market to be consistent with the trend of digitalization. This paper addressed this issue by employing a series of data from prefecture-level cities between 2010 and 2019 in China. Using panel data methods under fixed effect, synthetic difference-in-differences (SDID), and temporal-spatial econometrics, the paper’s hypothesis sheds light on the positive impact of the DE on DNSs. The regression results showed a 14.84% of improvement for the effects of DE development on DNS growth. The policy impact effect increased the average treatment effect by 3.9% average treatment effect, accompanied by temporal and spatial correlations. Further analysis illustrated that a possible intermediary mechanism through which the DE promotes the development of DNSs is the enhancement of the local product market development. It was concluded that policy-makers of developing countries should be devoted to breaking down domestic trade barriers among different regions to enhance the benefits of digitalization.
Many developing countries are facing the difficulty of choosing between economic growth and energy conservation and emission reduction (ECER). China has strengthened the implementation of ECER by setting environmental accountability as the development goal of local governments, hoping to have better governance effects. To evaluate the actual intervention effect of this approach, this paper constructs panel data covering 46 countries from 1995 to 2014 and uses the difference-in-differences (DID) method and the composite control method to quantitatively analyse the policy effect. The results show that China can effectively curb energy consumption and carbon emission intensity per unit of GDP by adding ECER targets to the government’s five-year plan, which has significant effects on ECER. Furthermore, we use an intermediary mechanism to test and identify low-carbon alternatives and an ECER promotion mechanism for technological advancement. The conclusion shows that economic development is compatible with low carbon and energy consumption. Combined with China’s long-term goals for ECER, it can be considered that on the road to achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality in the future, the economy and tertiary industry should be rationally developed, the degree of urbanization should receive more attention, and the proportion of thermal power generation should be reduced.
As a public infrastructure, the West to East Natural Gas Pipeline Project (WENGPP), acting as a key supplier of energy, has adopted a potential approach to reduce CE by expanding Natural gas (NG) power in the developed areas in China. However, the literature pertaining to the effects of the efforts made by WENGPP to reduce CE remains scant. Therefore, this study applied the causal inference framework—Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) to the Guangdong province, which was chosen as a case in point that provides empirical evidence related to the nexus between WENGPP and CE. Remarkably, our results disclosed that WENGPP had caused the total volume of CE in Guangdong province to decline notably. Both short and long-term emission inhibition effects approximated 10.68–14.96%. We revealed two CE reduction mechanisms: (i) through the low-carbon emission trade-off effect, wherein NG consumers were able to gain emission advantages under policy pressure; and (ii) through price comparison effect, where high combustion efficiency of NG consumers combined with low energy consumption costs could provide the incentive of promoting the optimization of regional emission structure. The article suggests a substitutable channel upgrading public energy infrastructure to improve the low-carbon alternative process, to policy makers.
The establishment of the “two-oriented society” pilot zone is China’s effort to explore an economic–environmental synergistic growth approach, and it is an important basis on which to solve the dilemma between economic development and environmental protection in less developed countries. By constructing an inter-provincial panel dataset and taking the “two-oriented society” pilot area as a policy intervention event, a quasi-natural experiment was conducted to evaluate the observed differences in economic growth and pollutant emissions using counterfactual estimation. The results show that, during the policy intervention period, the emission of solid waste in Hubei and Hunan provinces was significantly reduced, and the level of haze particles in Hunan province was also remarkably suppressed; however, the environmental emission problems such as water pollution were not improved in comparison to the national level. At the same time, the economic growth rate of Hubei and Hunan provinces was clearly better than the counterfactual control group after the policy pilot, showing the economic promotion effect of the construction of the “two-oriented society” pilot zone. We conclude that the establishment of the “two-oriented society” provides a reference for a successful path to sustainable growth, and there is no absolute contradiction between economic growth and environmental friendliness.
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