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In this article we examine the effects of foreign trade, economic growth, and inter-city strategic interaction on pollution in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) Urban Agglomeration in China. We find that when the effects of many factors are controlled for, foreign trade is positively related to pollution intensity in the YRD cities. Our results also support the Environmental Kuznets Curve by showing that when per capita income grows larger, pollution intensity first rises and then falls. We also find that ceteris paribus, a higher level of city human capital intensity is associated with a lower level of city pollution intensity. In addition, our results show that there exists inter-city strategic interaction among the governments of the YRD cities in determining their effort levels with respect to environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports China’s macroeconomic trends in downward pressures and discusses the effects of the ‘micro stimulus’ on the growth performance of Chinese economy. It appears that economic growth rebounds significantly in the short term every time ‘micro stimulus’ is applied, but the economy slows down again once the stimulus dwindles. China’s economic growth thus exhibits a pattern of significant ‘stimulus-dependence’. When facing economic downturn, China has only resorted to stimulus policy to sustain growth. Not surprisingly, our findings indicate that ‘micro stimulus’ cannot realize the strategic intent of growth stabilization and structural adjustment, and may even lead to more structural chaos. One problem that can be attributed to the near-sighted strategy is the worsening productivity performance since the financial crisis of 2008. Therefore both improvement in social security systems and social programs designed for maintaining long run growth are needed in order to improve productivity performance on the one hand and to facilitate structural adjustments on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, within the framework of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), we empirically investigate the effects of regional openness to foreign direct investment (FDI) and regional economic growth on pollution emission across the Chinese provinces. Our analysis shows FDI contributes to more serious pollution emission, where the effect of the former on the latter is realized through the former’s impacts on the input of natural resources or the industry mix, either of which is associated with the level of total factor productivity. Our analysis also shows that with the continuous growth of output and per capita output, pollution emission and pollution emission intensity would both first rise and then fall, which lends support to the EKC hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study tests economic growth and convergence across the Chinese provinces during the period 1981–2005 based on augmented neoclassical growth models where land is included as a production input. A positive steady-state growth of per capita output cannot be sustained if the population growth rate or the output elasticity of land is sufficiently high. The study implements a panel data approach and shows that land may have an output elasticity as high as 1/3, suggesting that the natural environment indeed poses an important constraint on China's economic growth. In this study of the Chinese provinces, the panel data approach has implied much higher rates of conditional convergence in per capita output, compared with cross-section estimations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on data of 31 Chinese provinces over the period 1980-2004, the study in this paper presents new evidence on the effects of structural shocks and structural transformation on growth and convergence among the Chinese regions. The division of overall regional growth in labour productivity into three components - growth due to structural shocks, growth due to structural transformation and a 'residual' indicating growth due to region-specific changes - provides us with a better framework than the traditional one-sector Solow growth model for attributing growth and convergence to various different sources. Among other findings, the study has shown that during 1990-1999, structural shocks worked to widen the gap between rich regions and poor regions in China, while structural transformation worked to narrow the gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]