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.

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.

Research on the Impact of Government Environmental Information Disclosure on Green Total Factor Productivity: Empirical Experience from Chinese Province

Government environmental information disclosure is an important means to promote environmental supervision and law enforcement, and improve the level of environmental management. In order to explore the impact of government environmental information disclosure on the sustainability of urban economic growth, this paper uses the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) to measure the degree of government environmental information disclosure, studies its effect on green total factor productivity through two-way fixed effect model and systematic GMM estimation method, and further adopts threshold model to study whether there is heterogeneity in this effect. The results show that: (1) Each unit of government environmental information disclosure will increase green total factor productivity by 0.2 units. (2) Considering the endogeneity, the promotion of government environmental information disclosure to green total factor productivity has increased. (3) The degree of government environmental information disclosure plays a non-linear role in the path of green total factor productivity. The greater the degree of economic development, the more obvious the effect of government environmental information disclosure on green total factor productivity. Therefore, this paper believes that the government should strengthen the disclosure of environmental information based on the urban economic development to ensure the sustainability of urban economic development.

Empirical Cost of Electricity Outage on Labour and Capital Productivity in Nigeria

This study empirically examined the impact of electricity power outages on Nigeria’s capital and labour productivity. The emphasis is on how frequent electricity outage reduces labour and capital effectiveness and other factors of production. To achieve the above objective, annual time series data on Total Factor Productivity - a proxy for Nigeria’s factors productivity, Power Outage (electric power transmission and distribution losses as % of output), and other controlled variables were used to estimate the relationship and all data were from World Bank Development Indicators (WDI). The Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FOLS) technique was adopted for analysis. The empirical results showed a negative relationship between power outages and factor productivity. The result also reveals that electricity pricing has a significant negative impact on the factor productivity while both electricity generation and population have a significant positive impact on Nigeria’s total factor productivity. The implication is that the substitution effect between labour and capital is positive, meaning that Nigeria exhibits a labour-intensive production function. In conclusion, the study is of the opinion that power outage and electricity pricing negatively impact factors productivity while electricity generation and population have a positive relationship with factors productivity in Nigeria.