The government and the market are the two main means for resource allocation, and both play important roles in economic development and environmental protection. Based on the theoretical mechanism ...analysis, this study empirically investigated the relationship between government intervention, market development, and China's provincial pollution emission efficiency by using the static panel OLS, system generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM), and panel threshold effect model during the period 2000–2017. The results show that the impact of government intervention on China's provincial pollution emission efficiency shows a non-linear U-shaped curve relationship, and there is a positive correlation between market development and provincial pollution emission efficiency in China. Government intervention and market development are complementary, rather than a substitute for each other, in promoting China's provincial pollution emission efficiency. When government intervention is set as the threshold variable, the impact of government intervention on China's provincial pollution emission efficiency shows the feature of “promotes first, then inhibits.” However, when market development is set as the threshold variable, government intervention is only conducive to the improvement of China's provincial pollution emission efficiency at a moderate marketization level. Lastly, some policy implications related to the government and the market in enhancing China's provincial pollution emission efficiency are presented.
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•The relationship between government intervention, market development and pollution emission efficiency is investigated from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.•Government intervention and market development are complementary in promoting China’s provincial pollution emission efficiency.•Panel threshold effect model is employed to explore the joint impact of government intervention, market development on China’s provincial pollution emission efficiency.
Improving the green total-factor productivity (GTFP) is a key measure to coordinate industrial development and environmental protection in China. This study adopts the biennial Malmquist–Luenberger ...(BML) productivity index to estimate the GTFP change of China's 34 industrial subsectors covering the period 2005–2015. Subsequently, fixed-effect panel quantile regression is applied to analyze the heterogeneous effects of eight selected influencing factors on China's industrial GTFP change. The results show that China's overall industrial GTFP exhibited an increasing trend during the study period and varied greatly in different sub-sectors. Moreover, technological innovation rather than efficiency promotion was the main contributor to the improvement of industrial GTFP in China. The impact of the scale structure (SS) was significantly positive across the quantiles and maintained a slightly downward trend. The impact of the property rights structure (PTS) was significantly negative and showed an increasing trend across the quantiles. The impact of the energy intensity (EI) slightly increased and was significantly negative at most quantiles. The energy consumption structure (ECS) exhibited an increasing trend and had a significantly negative effect at the middle quantiles. Technological innovation (TI) exerted a significantly positive effect and displayed a downward trend across the quantiles, and it was the most important factor to drive industrial GTFP growth. The “pollution halo” hypothesis and the Porter hypothesis were both verified with a certain range from the analysis of foreign direct investment (FDI) and environmental regulation (ER), as well as the interaction between ER and TI. Our results stress the importance of the heterogeneous effects of these influencing factors on different quantile subsectors when formulating the related measures and policies.
The above figure intuitively illustrates the relationship between the eight influencing factors and industrial green total factor productivity change in China according to the estimation results of the fixed-effect panel quantile regression approach, which visually shows the heterogeneous effects of all influencing factors on China's industrial green total factor productivity. Display omitted
•The biennial Malmquist-Luenberger (BML) index is used to estimate China’s industrial GTFP growth.•The panel quantile regression is employed to investigate the influencing factors of China’s industrial GTFP growth.•Technological progress rather than efficiency promotion is the main contributor to China’s industrial GTFP growth.•The effects of all influencing factors on China’s industrial GTP growth are heterogeneous at different quantiles.
Combining freshwater consumption and wastewater emissions into a unified analysis framework and utilizing the epsilon-based measure (EBM) model with the characteristics of radial model and non-radial ...model, this paper evaluates green water use efficiency (GWUE) of 11 provincial-regions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) and investigates its spatiotemporal differences during the period 2005-2014, on basis of which the contribution rate of each input-specific green water use inefficiency in the overall green water use efficiency and the potential of freshwater-saving and wastewater emissions reduction are also calculated. The Theil index is used to explore the sources of the provincial gap of green water use inefficiency, and a random-effect panel Tobit model is applied to test the impact of the influencing factors of green water use inefficiency in the YREB. It is found that green water use inefficiency of the YREB is relatively low and regional differences is significant during the sample period, indicating a large potential of water-saving and water pollution reduction, and narrowing BGAP and WGAP of the Upstream is the key for improving green water use inefficiency in the YREB. The panel Tobit regression results show that economic development, technological innovation, water use structure, water resources endowment, environmental regulation and regional differences all play positive/negative effects on green water use inefficiency in the YREB, while these factors' influencing direction, degree and significance are significantly different. The conclusions of our study can provide considerably valuable information for the YREB to reserve water resources and reduce wastewater emissions.
Abstract
Background
Since December 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe adult respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, occurred in Wuhan, and rapidly spread throughout China. This ...study aimed to clarify the characteristics of patients with refractory COVID-19.
Methods
In this retrospective single-center study, we included 155 consecutive patients with confirmed COVID-19 in Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University from 1 January to 5 February. The cases were divided into general and refractory COVID-19 groups according to the clinical efficacy of treatment after hospitalization, and the differences between groups were compared.
Results
Compared with patients with general COVID-19 (45.2%), those with refractory disease were older, were more likely to be male, and had more underlying comorbid conditions, a lower incidence of fever, higher maximum temperatures among patients with fever, higher incidences of shortness of breath and anorexia, more severe disease assessment at admission, higher neutrophil, aspartate aminotransferase, lactate dehydrogenase, and C-reactive protein levels, lower platelet counts and albumin levels, and higher incidences of bilateral pneumonia and pleural effusion (P < .05). Patients with refractory COVID-19 were more likely to receive oxygen, mechanical ventilation, expectorant, and adjunctive treatment, including corticosteroids, antiviral drugs, and immune enhancers (P < .05). Considering the factors of disease severity at admission, mechanical ventilation, and intensive care unit transfer, patients with refractory COVID-19 were also more likely to be male, have manifestations of anorexia on admission, and receive oxygen, expectorant, and adjunctive agents (P < .05).
Conclusion
In nearly 50% of patients with COVID-19 obvious clinical and radiological remission was not achieved within 10 days after hospitalization. Male, anorexia, and no fever at admission was predictive of poor treatment efficacy.
In nearly 50% of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), obvious clinical and radiological remission could not be attained within 10 days after hospitalization. There were obvious differences in clinical characteristics between patients with refractory versus general COVID-19.
this paper applies an epsilon-based measure DEA approach to evaluate the regional ecological energy efficiency for 30 regions in China and its three major areas for the period 2007–2015. Based on ...this, the temporal and spatial disparities of China's regional ecological energy efficiency are investigated. To explore the sources of China's regional ecological energy inefficiency, the overall ecological energy inefficiency is decomposed into several input-specific inefficiencies. And then, the energy saving and pollution abatement potentials of each Chinese region is calculated using the differences between the target values and the actual values of energy consumption and pollution emissions. The empirical results show that China's ecological energy efficiency is relatively low and regional differences are significant for the period 2007–2015. It can be demonstrated that the inefficiency to abate pollution is the main contributor to China's regional ecological energy inefficiency. By calculating the potentials of energy saving and pollution abatement, it can be found that the east area has the lowest potential, followed by the central area, with the west area having the highest potential.
Deeply investigating the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI), fiscal expenditure and green total-factor productivity (GTFP) is beneficial to formulating effective policies to promote ...the high-quality development in China. Based on theoretical mechanism analysis, with panel data of China's mainland 30 provinces during 2003-2017, this paper utilizes spatial econometric model to empirically explore the effects of FDI, fiscal expenditure and their interaction item on the growth of GTFP in China. The results show that FDI significantly promote the growth of the local and its neighboring GTFP, and both fiscal expenditure and the interaction between FDI and fiscal expenditure exert significantly negative effects on the growth of GTFP in the local and its neighboring regions. A series of robustness checks and the endogeneity test can ensure the reliability of these results. In addition, great heterogeneity can be found across China's different regions in the relationship between FDI, fiscal expenditure and GTFP. The conclusions suggest that it is necessary to give fully play to the synergy between FDI and fiscal expenditure and formulate regionally targeted policies to improve GTFP and promote high-quality development in China.
Based on calculating the urban resilience index from five aspects of economy, society, institutions, infrastructure, and ecology by adopting the entropy method, this study applies the time-varying ...DID model to systematically examine HSR's impact on China's urban resilience, on basis of which its heterogeneities and the mediating effect of urban innovation are also quantified. The findings reveal that: (1) HSR can significantly promote China's urban resilience, as supported by various robustness tests. (2) HSR can significantly improve economic and institution resilience of cities, but does not play a significant role on social resilience and infrastructure resilience, and has a negative effect on ecological resilience. (3) The driving effects of HSR on the resilience of core cities, large cities, and non-resource-based cities are more significant. (4) Urban innovation is an important channel through which HSR impacts urban resilience. The conclusions of this study can offer useful insights for China's future HSR planning and resilient cities construction.
•Study shows HSR boosts China's urban resilience, supported by robustness tests.•Economic/institutional resilience benefits, but ecological impact negative. Effects vary by city type.•Significant effects observed in core cities, large cities, and non-resource-based cities.•Urban innovation identified as an important mediating factor in the impact of HSR on urban resilience.
Recently, environmental pollution has attracted a lot of attention domestically and internationally. It is known that energy utilization is a major source of China’s environmental pollution. ...Measuring environmental efficiency of energy utilization in Chinese provinces first, the paper then offers decision supports for relevant departments in order to achieve sustainable development of energy and environment in China. This research chooses CO2 emission as a substitute variable for environmental effects of energy utilization and puts it into the study framework based on total-factor production theory to measure the environmental efficiency of energy utilization of each province and three major regions. On the basis of the above results this research further measures the cost of environmental regulation for each province. Provincial panel data during the period of 2000–2007 are used to carry out empirical study. The analysis indicates that the environmental efficiency of energy utilization in Chinese provinces varies greatly from each other, meaning that both economic output and CO2 emissions need considerable improvement. In addition, the results of empirical study also show that the environmental efficiency of energy utilization in China is quite low. Therefore, to ensure sustainable development of China’s energy, economy and environment, we should resort to advanced technology as the support to promote the efficient and clean utilization of energy resources. Besides, most Chinese provinces have spent quite a lot on environmental regulation, implying that in these provinces development of the economy and the environment are not in harmony. The contributions of this research are as follows: it constructs the models for measuring environmental efficiency of energy utilization in Chinese provinces; it introduces the idea of “environmental regulation” into research system and measures the environmental regulation cost of each Chinese province.
The debate over the role of fiscal decentralization and industrial structure upgrading in China’s environmental governance has received increasing attention. Based on China’s provincial panel data ...from 2003 to 2019, this paper investigates the impact of fiscal decentralization and industrial structure upgrading on carbon emissions to provide empirical evidence for the above theoretical argument. The results show that fiscal decentralization and industrial structure upgrading are negatively correlated with carbon emissions, while the interaction term for fiscal decentralization with industrial structure upgrading presents a facilitating effect on carbon emissions. Besides, fiscal decentralization, industrial structure upgrading, and the interaction term have significant regional heterogeneity on carbon emissions. When fiscal decentralization and industrial structure upgrading are taken as threshold variables, the effects of industrial structure upgrading and fiscal decentralization are significantly nonlinear. Moreover, environmental regulation, transportation infrastructure, and carbon emissions are positively correlated. There exists an inverted U-shaped relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth, which proves environmental Kuznets curve theorem. However, FDI and urbanization have no significant effect on carbon emissions. According to the above conclusions, it is necessary to strengthen the positive interaction between fiscal decentralization and industrial structure upgrading in mitigating carbon emissions, promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of China’s economy, thus realizing the goals of “carbon peak” and “carbon neutrality.”
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