Green growth in pilot zones for green finance and innovation

IF 9.3 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Energy Policy Pub Date : 2025-03-26 DOI:10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114611

Wenqi Zhao , Moau Yong Toh , Jerry Zhirong Zhao

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Substantial literature has acknowledged the efficacy of green finance policies in environmental enhancement, but their impact on green growth remains understudied. This paper employs a quasi-natural experiment to investigate the effect of the Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zones (GFPZ) policy on green growth in 288 prefecture-level cities in China over the period 2010–2021. The findings indicate that the GFPZ policy significantly promotes urban green growth, measured by green total factor productivity, with technical change as the primary driver. The findings survive Difference-in-Difference (DID), Propensity Score Matching-DID (PSM-DID), Synthetic DID (SDID), and other robustness checks. Mechanism analyses show that the GFPZ policy promotes urban green growth by advancing green financial instruments, constructing green infrastructure, increasing public transport accessibility, and optimizing the energy structure. Heterogeneity analyses show that the policy's effect on green growth is more pronounced in cities with lower fiscal pressure, greater energy endowment, and lower pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. The spillover effect analysis indicates that green growth extends to cities located within approximately 250 km from the GFPZs. These findings offer important policy implications as governments optimize green finance initiatives for promoting urban sustainable development across regions.

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推进绿色金融创新试验区绿色发展

大量文献已经承认了绿色金融政策在环境改善方面的有效性，但其对绿色增长的影响仍未得到充分研究。本文采用准自然实验研究了2010-2021年中国288个地级市绿色金融改革创新试验区政策对绿色增长的影响。研究结果表明，GFPZ政策显著促进了城市绿色增长（以绿色全要素生产率衡量），其中技术变革是主要驱动力。研究结果通过了差中差（DID）、倾向得分匹配DID （PSM-DID）、合成DID （SDID）和其他稳健性检查。机制分析表明，GFPZ政策通过推进绿色金融工具、建设绿色基础设施、增加公共交通可达性和优化能源结构促进城市绿色增长。异质性分析表明，在财政压力较小、能源禀赋较大、污染物和温室气体排放较低的城市，政策对绿色增长的影响更为显著。溢出效应分析表明，绿色增长延伸至自贸区周边250公里范围内的城市。这些发现为各国政府优化绿色金融举措以促进各地区城市可持续发展提供了重要的政策启示。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Energy Policy 管理科学-环境科学

CiteScore

17.30

自引率

5.60%

发文量

540

审稿时长

7.9 months

期刊介绍： Energy policy is the manner in which a given entity (often governmental) has decided to address issues of energy development including energy conversion, distribution and use as well as reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in order to contribute to climate change mitigation. The attributes of energy policy may include legislation, international treaties, incentives to investment, guidelines for energy conservation, taxation and other public policy techniques. Energy policy is closely related to climate change policy because totalled worldwide the energy sector emits more greenhouse gas than other sectors.