| With the rapid development of economic globalization and the gradual weakening of trade barriers between countries and regions,regional integration has become a new trend of global economic development and regional spatial structure optimization.In this context,regional integration mainly based on city clusters has not only become the core way to improve regional economic competitiveness and realize its coordinated development,but also an important support to build a new development pattern with domestic circulation as the main body and dual domestic and international circulation to promote each other.As a multi-scale and multi-dimensional concept,regional integration is essentially a dynamic change process of free flow of production factors and inter-regional interconnection.However,in the rapid development of regional integration,the problems of massive increase in total urban and regional pollutant emissions,intensification of transboundary water and air pollution,and serious ecological damage have worsened and become key bottlenecks limiting the development of high-quality integration of urban agglomerations.However,although previous studies have analyzed the impact of trade integration on industrial agglomeration from the perspective of trade freedom,they have less directly analyzed the impact of regional integration on industrial green transformation and upgrading.Meanwhile,theoretical studies have not yet incorporated trade costs,factor flow costs and environmental regulations into a unified analytical framework to explore the differentiated impacts and mechanisms of market integration and institutional integration on industrial green transformation,respectively.Based on the development practice of Chinese urban agglomerations,this study incorporates trade costs,factor flow costs and environmental regulations into a unified analytical framework based on a new economic geography paradigm,systematically explores the interactions among them and their effects on the green transformation of manufacturing industries,reveals the resource and environmental effects of regional integration,and thus provides novel theoretical perspectives and policy recommendations for promoting the green transformation of industries and the highquality integrated development of urban agglomerations.It provides novel theoretical perspectives and policy recommendations to promote industrial green transformation and promote high-quality integrated development of urban agglomerations.Since regional integration mainly includes commodity market integration,factor market integration and institutional integration,this study measures commodity market integration,technology market integration and government-led institutional integration in the Yangtze River Delta city cluster from the perspective of process and outcome,and explores their differential effects on the green transformation of manufacturing industries and their specific mechanisms.The results show that regional integration has a profound impact on regional industrial agglomeration,resource allocation efficiency,and green technology progress by reducing trade costs,factor flow costs,and promoting knowledge spillover and technology diffusion,thus promoting manufacturing production efficiency,pollution reduction,and green transformation.This study not only helps to enrich the theories and research hypotheses on industrial transformation and upgrading in the new economic geography and environmental economics,but also has important policy value for optimizing the economic spatial pattern of Chinese urban agglomerations and achieving their high-quality integrated development.Specifically,the findings of this paper are mainly in some of the following aspects.First,at the theoretical level,based on the new economic geography theory,this study analyzes the effects of increased trade freedom and factor freedom on the share of regional polluting industries and their pollution emissions in the presence of asymmetric market barriers using an improved free capital model.Among them,the effect of market integration on the green transformation of regional industries is the result of the combined effect of trade substitution production effect and local market effect.Meanwhile,technology market integration improves firms’ green innovation capacity and reduces pollution emissions mainly through expanding local market effect and knowledge spillover effect to promote industrial green transformation.In addition,environmental regulation will weaken the influence of trade freedom and capital freedom on the cross-regional or cross-industry transfer of polluting industries and avoid excessive concentration of polluting industries and their large increase in pollution emissions.Therefore,with the promotion of institutional integration process,the difference of environmental regulation between regions will gradually decrease and promote the reduction of the share of polluting industries and their pollution emissions in urban agglomerations,thus promoting the green transformation of urban agglomeration industries.Second,in terms of characteristic facts,this study measures the levels of commodity market integration,technology market integration,and institutional integration in the Yangtze River Delta city cluster from the process and outcome perspectives,respectively,and uses GIS software for spatial visualization to visually identify the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics and patterns of regional integration in different dimensions.On this basis,the green transformation of manufacturing industry in the Yangtze River Delta city cluster is measured from the perspective of efficiency and structure,respectively.Among them,the regional integration of the Yangtze River Delta city cluster shows fluctuating upward characteristics in general,but with obvious spatial unevenness.However,although the repeated expansions of the YRD ECC increase the number of members,the Yangtze River Delta city cluster collaborative governance and its institutional construction still face serious challenges due to the inconsistent level of economic development and different interest demands among members.From the perspective of efficiency,the GTFP of manufacturing industries in the Yangtze River Delta city cluster shows an overall upward trend,reflecting the continuous optimization and upgrading of manufacturing industries in the city cluster and its transformation towards greening and low carbonization.However,the proportion of the output value of polluting industries in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration shows an overall trend of rising and then falling,showing the spatial layout characteristics of diffusion in agglomeration.Third,the main findings of the empirical analysis of commodity market integration affecting green transformation of manufacturing industry are some aspects:(1)There is a non-linear relationship between commodity market integration and green transformation of manufacturing industry,i.e.,with the increasing level of commodity market integration,green transformation of manufacturing industry shows a trend of rising and then falling.(2)In terms of influence mechanism,commodity market integration has a significant impact on green transformation of manufacturing industry mainly through industrial agglomeration,resource mismatch and green technology advancement.Among them,market integration promotes the green transformation of manufacturing industry by promoting regional industrial agglomeration and generating agglomeration economy under the effect of local market and enterprise migration.However,excessive industrial agglomeration also leads to congestion effect and hinders the green transformation of manufacturing industry.(3)There are heterogeneous effects of commodity market integration on the green transformation of manufacturing industries in regions with different levels of economic development.Among them,although market integration significantly promotes the green transformation of manufacturing industries in the in situ cities of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration,it has no significant impact on the green transformation of manufacturing industries in the newcomer cities.(4)By replacing the indicators and regression methods,the impact of commodity market integration on manufacturing green transformation remains robust and passes the endogeneity test,thus improving the credibility and validity of the previous estimation results.(5)In terms of spatial effects,there is a certain spatial spillover effect of manufacturing green transformation,and the market segmentation in neighboring regions will hinder the green transformation of manufacturing in this region.Fourth,there are some aspects of the main findings that technology market integration affects manufacturing green transformation:(1)Technology market integration significantly promotes manufacturing green transformation,and the conclusions still hold after the endogeneity test.(2)In terms of influence mechanism,technology market integration development significantly promotes green transformation of manufacturing industry mainly through industrial agglomeration,reduction of energy use intensity and improvement of green technology.(3)The development of integrated technology markets has a differentiated impact on the green transformation of manufacturing industries in different regions,among which the cities of origin,with good infrastructure and interaction,not only attract more innovation resources to cluster under the effect of the priority linkage mechanism,but also form closer innovation ties,obtain more sufficient agglomeration externalities and network externalities,and promote the improvement of their manufacturing production efficiency and their green technology progress,thus promoting the green development of manufacturing industries.In turn,it promotes the rapid improvement of the green development level of manufacturing industry.In addition,with the strengthening of inter-city innovation links,the integration of technology markets in the Yangtze River Delta city cluster has been increasing and promoting the development of regional innovation linkage network,which has a certain promotion effect on the green transformation of manufacturing industries in cities of different scales.(4)By replacing the core indicators and regression methods,the impact of intercity innovation linkages and their resulting development of technology market integration on manufacturing green transformation remains robust and improves the credibility and validity of the previous estimation results.Fifth,the main findings of institutional integration affecting green transformation in manufacturing are some of the following:(1)Institutional integration promotes regional green transformation in manufacturing and different types of environmental regulations have heterogeneous effects on green transformation in manufacturing.(2)In terms of impact mechanisms,institutional integration promotes the improvement of manufacturing production efficiency and its green transformation by strengthening industrial agglomeration,improving resource mismatch,and promoting regional technological progress.(3)Third,institutional integration has a heterogeneous impact on the green transformation of manufacturing industries in regions with different levels of economic development.Among them,the government-led institutional integration plays a certain role in promoting the green transformation of manufacturing industries in cities of different scale levels,but there are characteristics of decreasing scale.Among them,joining the Yangtze River Delta Economic Coordination Council has the strongest promoting effect on the improvement of manufacturing green development efficiency in large cities,while it has a hindering effect on the improvement of manufacturing green development efficiency in small cities.(4)By replacing core indicators and regression methods,the effect of government-led institutional integration development on manufacturing green transformation remains robust,and the endogeneity test and robustness test are used to improve the credibility and validity of the previous estimation results.(5)In terms of spatial effects,the impact of institutional integrated development on green transformation of manufacturing industry has significant spatial spillover effects.With the expansion of the Yangtze River Delta Economic Coordination Council,the deepening inter-city cooperation not only promotes industrial agglomeration and technological progress in this region,but also promotes industrial agglomeration and technological progress in neighboring regions under the effect of spatial spillover,thus improving the overall manufacturing production efficiency of the common city cluster and its green transformation.Based on the above findings,the following policy recommendations can be used in practice to promote the green transformation of regional industries and high-quality integrated development of urban clusters.First,strengthen the top-level system design and improve the governance mechanism of regional cooperation.In particular,local governments need to change the political zero-sum game mentality,actively carry out cross-regional cooperation and actively integrate into the Yangtze River Delta city cluster,so as to alleviate the vicious competition between regions and optimize the industrial division of labor.Secondly,it is necessary to accelerate the construction of a unified market,break local protectionism and eliminate administrative barriers between regions,so as to play a positive role of market integration in the green transformation of industries.In particular,it is necessary to accelerate the unification of market access systems and market supervision rules between regions and build a unified,open and efficient modern market system for urban clusters,so as to promote the free flow of production factors and alleviate market segmentation between regions.Third,when implementing environmental regulation policies,it is necessary to take into account not only the differences in regional economic development levels,but also to adopt differentiated regional integration development strategies and environmental regulation tools to mitigate the negative effects of regional integration on the economic development of small and medium-sized cities and to reduce the unbalanced and insufficient development of urban agglomerations.Fourth,the government should implement the national innovation-driven strategy,promote the integrated development of technology factor markets and build a national innovation system and a regional innovation system,so as to provide innovative impetus for the green transformation of industries and the improvement of innovation performance of urban clusters.Fifth,local governments need to strengthen synergistic development,build a cross-regional pollution management system and a mutually beneficial benefit pattern,and stimulate different regions to participate in synergistic pollution management and achieve highquality integrated development of urban agglomerations through counterpart support and ecological compensation mechanisms. |
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