Sustainable Green Growth in Developing Economies

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) initiated by Chinese government could be regarded as a systematic framework for promoting economic cooperation and development among the countries along the Belt and Road and China. This paper attempts to analyze economic and environmental performance in 61 developing countries along Belt and Road. An additive total factor productivity growth measure allows aggregating contributions of individual countries along the BRI to construct a reasonable measure. Both desirable and undesirable outputs are considered. The growth in the total factor productivity is decomposed with respect to the economic and environmental contributions. The annual average growth rate of green productivity is 3.1% and the disparity of economic and environmental performance could be observed among countries. Some countries show robust economic growths while environmental performance slows down green growth. This indicates that developing economies should pay attention to environmental impacts and promote sustainable development by sharing emission reduction technologies.

An Analysis of Agricultural Production Efficiency of Yangtze River Economic Belt Based on a Three-Stage DEA Malmquist Model

The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is a major national strategic development area in China, and the development of the YREB will greatly promote the development of the entirety China, so research on its agricultural production efficiency is also of great significance. This paper is committed to studying the agricultural production efficiency of 11 provinces in the YREB and adopts a combination of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model and the Malmquist index to make a dynamic and static analysis on the YREB’s agricultural production efficiency from 2010 to 2019. Then, a three-stage DEA Malmquist model that eliminates the factors of random interference and management inefficiency is compared to a model without elimination. The results show that the adjusted technological efficiency changes, technological progress, and total factor productivity increased by −0.1%, 0.24%, and 0.22%, respectively. When comparing these values to the pre-adjustment values, the results indicate that the effect of environmental variables cannot be ignored when studying the agricultural production efficiency of the YREB. At the same time, the differences in the agricultural production efficiency in the YREB are reasonably explained, and feasible suggestions are put forward.

Regulation Effect of Smart Grid on Green Transformation of Electric Power Enterprises: Based on the Investigation of “Leader” Trap

The 2060 carbon neutral target reflects the long-term equilibrium and stability of production activities and the natural environment. As an important part of Chinese energy structure, the operation and transformation of power enterprises will face higher requirements. Although the rapid development of smart grids provides necessary technical support for power enterprises to build a modern energy system with green power as the core, whether power enterprises can use smart grids to improve their operating performance and environmental performance has yet to be discussed. The differences caused by the heterogeneity of property rights will also have an impact on the green transformation and development of enterprises. This paper selects 25 Chinese power enterprises as the research objects and uses the 2011–2019 enterprise panel data and the data envelopment analysis model to evaluate the operating performance and environmental performance of power enterprises. The results show that the overall fluctuation trend of the total factor productivity index and green total factor productivity index of power enterprises are W-shaped, and technological progress is the main driving force for the improvement of power operating performance and environmental performance; Compared with enterprises with a single power generation method, enterprises with diversified power generation methods performed better in their overall total factor productivity index. After that, text mining and machine learning methods are used to classify the text of the enterprise’s annual report to determine whether the enterprise applies smart grid technology for production and operation activities. Finally, using feasible generalized least squares method (FLGS) and dynamic panel system generalized moment estimation (SYS-GMM) to analyze the impact of smart grid on the operating performance and environmental performance of power enterprises, and the nature of corporate property rights in this process. It is found that smart grids can improve the operating performance and environmental performance of power enterprises; compared with state-owned enterprises, non-state-owned enterprises can achieve better performance in the application of smart grids to improve operating performance and environmental performance. Finally, this study provides corresponding policy recommendations for power enterprises to achieve performance improvement and green transformation development.

Frontier Technology, Trade, FDI, and TFP in the Electrical and Electronic Industries: Exporting or Processing Trade?

Does “openness” determine “catching-up” of establishments to frontier technology and total factor productivity (TFP) in Malaysia's electrical and electronic (E&E) industries? We contribute to this debate by applying a new measurement of processing trade intensity. Utilizing stochastic frontier analysis and Levinsohn and Pertrin (LP) TFP, we investigate determinants of technical efficiency (TE) and TFP. The results show that processing trade intensity and not export intensity determines TE and TFP for the overall sample and subsample of foreign establishments. In the processing trade subsample, export intensity is negatively related to TE and unrelated to TFP, obtaining an unconventional result that exporters are inefficient and not associated with TFP. The results show that higher foreign ownership shares of establishments are negatively associated with LP TFP.