The impact of China's financial expenditure on energy and carbon emission efficiency: Applying a meta-dynamic non-radial directional distance function

China is the world's largest energy consumer and carbon emitter, but despite unbalanced growth among the eastern, central, and western regions, local financial expenditure on energy conservation and environmental protection has increased from 255.1 billion yuan in 2011 to 582.5 billion yuan in 2018. This research thus introduces financial expenditure like a new input into a dynamic meta-frontier non-radial directional distance function to evaluate China's energy and carbon emission efficiency over that period of time. Different from previous studies, after considering financial expenditure we find that most provinces have narrowed their gap with the benchmark frontier, reflecting that increasing financial expenditure does help improve energy and carbon emission efficiency. The results highlight that most provinces should increase their financial expenditure on energy conservation and environmental protection, especially in the central and western regions, so as to narrow their technology gap with the eastern region.

Unbalanced Growth in the Labourscape: explaining regional employment divergence

This paper investigates the role of human capital in explaining divergent employment growth within advanced economies. It adds a spatial dimension to William J. Baumol’s theory of ‘unbalanced growth’ by linking it with the concept of ‘job polarization’. We develop a theory of ‘geographical unbalanced growth’ that explains divergent employment trajectories in terms of skill restructuring. The theory is operationalized via a novel shift–share extension, which is applied to Australian data. We find evidence of ongoing regional divergence and for our proposed mechanism. The findings reinforce the importance of active policies to attract high-skilled jobs to non-metropolitan regions.

Unbalanced Growth in Downtown Toronto: Maintaining Employment Uses in Toronto’s Downtown Core

Downtown Toronto is experiencing a significant increase in residential development. It attracts people and investment due to its mixture of land uses, transit, and vibrant urban environment. As an employment node, downtown plays an important role in the economic stability of the city. The King-Spadina case study is used to argue that unbalanced growth is occurring within a significant employment area and if left unmitigated, will seriously undermine the future employment growth opportunities that will be necessary to the continued success of the city. This study found that: 1) King- Spadina is a significant employment area, 2) King-Spadina is experiencing rapid population growth, 3) King-Spadina contains a significant amount of developable land, and 4) Residential development is displacing non-residential uses and consuming remaining soft sites at a significant pace. Recommendations are made to address the nature of growth happening in the area and to better protect long-term employment growth opportunities.

Unbalanced Growth in Downtown Toronto: Maintaining Employment Uses in Toronto’s Downtown Core

Downtown Toronto is experiencing a significant increase in residential development. It attracts people and investment due to its mixture of land uses, transit, and vibrant urban environment. As an employment node, downtown plays an important role in the economic stability of the city. The King-Spadina case study is used to argue that unbalanced growth is occurring within a significant employment area and if left unmitigated, will seriously undermine the future employment growth opportunities that will be necessary to the continued success of the city. This study found that: 1) King- Spadina is a significant employment area, 2) King-Spadina is experiencing rapid population growth, 3) King-Spadina contains a significant amount of developable land, and 4) Residential development is displacing non-residential uses and consuming remaining soft sites at a significant pace. Recommendations are made to address the nature of growth happening in the area and to better protect long-term employment growth opportunities.

Anisotropic Singular Neumann Equations with Unbalanced Growth

We consider a nonlinear parametric Neumann problem driven by the anisotropic (p, q)-Laplacian and a reaction which exhibits the combined effects of a singular term and of a parametric superlinear perturbation. We are looking for positive solutions. Using a combination of topological and variational tools together with suitable truncation and comparison techniques, we prove a bifurcation-type result describing the set of positive solutions as the positive parameter λ varies. We also show the existence of minimal positive solutions $u_{\lambda }^{*}$ u λ ∗ and determine the monotonicity and continuity properties of the map $\lambda \mapsto u_{\lambda }^{*}$ λ ↦ u λ ∗ .

Asymptotically vanishing nodal solutions for critical double phase problems

We consider a Dirichlet double phase problem with unbalanced growth. In the reaction we have the combined effects of a critical term and of a locally defined Carathéodory perturbation. Using cut-off functions and truncation techniques we bypass the critical term and deal with a coercive problem. Using this auxillary problem, we show that the original Dirichlet equation has a whole sequence of nodal (sign-changing) solutions which converge to zero in the Musielak–Orlice–Sobolev space and in L ∞ .