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Green economic development is an effective tactic for China to cope with the predicament of resources and the environment. As "smoke-free industries", producer services are becoming the main contributors to urban green economic development (UGED). The paper adopts the super-efficiency EBM model to estimate the UGED index of 268 Chinese cities from 2005 to 2019. Based on the theoretical analysis, econometric models are constructed to systematically test how the specialized and diversified agglomeration of producer services impacts UGED. The findings reveal that both agglomeration modes considerably enhance UGED in the local area and its surroundings. Diversified agglomeration exerts a stronger radiation and promotion effect than specialized agglomeration. In addition, the impact of the two agglomeration modes on UGED demonstrates pronounced heterogeneity in urban scales, economic development stages, and industries. Furthermore, mechanism studies suggest that agglomeration substantially boosts UGED by improving human capital, technological innovation, and upgrading industrial structure. As such, our findings serve as an empirical basis for understanding the mechanism of the impact of PSA on UGED and also offer significant insight for local governments to adopt differentiated industrial policies to enhance the positive agglomeration effect on UGED. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to maintain the balanced stability and resilient development of rural systems is an important issue that needs urgent attention in the field of sustainable rural development at present. In this paper, the entropy method, spatial autocorrelation model, and Geodetector were used to explore the rural resilience level, spatial distribution characteristics, and driving factors of 31 cities in the urban agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (UAMRYR), and to put forward corresponding policy suggestions. The results are as follows: (1) From 2005 to 2020, rural resilience in the UAMRYR showed an upward trend with an average annual growth rate of 8.26%. The ranking of the three major urban agglomerations is Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomerations > Wuhan urban agglomerations > Poyang Lake urban agglomerations. (2) During the study period, the spatial distribution of rural resilience gradually developed from a negative correlation to a strong positive correlation and generally showed the characteristics of high in the west and low in the east. (3) The urbanization rate, the size and structure of the economy, the difference in consumption and income between urban and rural areas, the local fiscal revenue, and the number of village committees are the key factors affecting the level of rural resilience. On this basis, we proposed policy recommendations to improve the economic, social, and ecological resilience of rural areas in the UAMRYR. The findings of this paper are expected to provide insights into the policy formulation of China's rural revitalization strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Realizing the coordination between the economic and environmental systems through a green growth model is an important goal for China to enter the high-quality development stage. Meanwhile, financial technology (fintech) is rapidly developing in China. To explore the relationship between the two, this research uses panel data from 276 cities in China from 2011 to 2022 and empirically tests through constructing econometric models and machine learning algorithms. The empirical result shows that fintech has an impact on green growth. Specifically, there is a U-shaped relationship between fintech and green growth, meaning that before a certain stage, fintech may have a certain inhibitory effect on green growth. After fintech exceeds a certain development level, it will promote the improvement of green growth. Further mediation tests show that innovation plays a mediating role in the impact of fintech on green growth. Additionally, this research also conducts consistency tests based on different criteria including the location, scale, and financial development level of cities. Based on the research findings, policy suggestions are proposed in this paper to promote the development of fintech and stimulate the growth of the green economy. Overall, our research sheds more light on the fintech-green growth linkage and provides new insights into comprehending the role of fintech in advancing towards a low-carbon economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of a city's green infrastructure is increasingly being driven by low-carbon innovation (LCI). However, knowledge of how LCI affects green economic efficiency (GEE) in China is largely unknown. This study investigates the spatial effects of LCI on GEE in 285 Chinese prefecture-level cities. The empirical findings show that LCI exerts significant beneficial effects on its GEE but negative effects on its neighbors. The positive direct effects on GEE are offset by negative indirect effects due to the lack of spatial linkage effect and the existence of the siphon and crowding-out effects among cities. Using a mediating effect model, we have identified three channels of LCI that affect GEE: industrial structure, energy consumption structure, and human capital. A further heterogeneity analysis indicates that the impacts of LCI on GEE differ by region and city development level. Furthermore, LCI in the building, greenhouse gas treatment, transportation, and sewage and pollutant treatment categories could greatly enhance local GEE. The findings herein provide an empirical experience for accurately accessing the spatial effect of LCI on GEE, and offer a critical decision-making reference for implementing a cross-city green linkage development mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using panel data for Chinese prefecture-level and above cities from 2003 to 2017, we employed the difference-in-differences (DID) method to explore whether innovative city constructions reduced carbon emissions. The results show that innovative city constructions significantly curb carbon emissions in Chinese cities, which is supported by a series of robustness tests. Specifically, we found that innovative city constructions could reduce carbon emissions by 5.21%, which is equivalent to a total of about 5.46 million tons. In addition, we provided evidence that innovative city constructions curb carbon emissions by promoting technological innovation, industrial upgrading and industrial green development, ecological improvement, and government intervention. Furthermore, heterogeneous results indicate that the carbon reduction effect of innovative city constructions is mainly found in eastern cities and cities with better industrial development and human capital base. Our findings further enrich the study on the environmental benefits of national innovation incentives and public policies and provide important insights in carbon neutrality and achieving sustainable development, especially for developing and emerging market countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]