Research On The Impact Of OFDI On China’s Energy And Environmental Efficiency

China’s outward foreign direct investment(OFDI)has increased rapidly and has shown great potential while exerting an important impact on China’s economic growth and environmental situation.Understanding the impact of China’s OFDI on energy and environmental efficiency will help evaluate and adjust China’s opening-up policy.This paper uses the non-radial directional distance function(NDDF)data envelopment analysis(DEA)method to measure the unified efficiency index(UEI)and energy-environmental performance index(EEI)of 30 provinces in China from 2003 to 2017.Furthermore,this paper applies the panel Tobit model to analyze the impacts of OFDI on the UEI and EEI and attempts to explain the influence mechanisms.Finally,this paper uses the method of spatial measurement to analyze the spatial spillover effects of OFDI on UEI and EEI.The results show the following: First,the overall levels of the UEI and EEI in China are not relatively high,and the UEI and EEI of Eastern,Central,and Western China have decreased in turn.Second,OFDI can improves energy and environmental efficiency by optimizing industry structure and increasing research and development investment(R&D).Third,the spatial model based on the adjacency matrix,the economic inverse distance matrix,and the provincial capital distance matrix all confirmed that OFDI has significant spatial spillover effects.The increase in OFDI in the region will contribute to the UEI and EEI of the surrounding area.We thus argue that the Chinese government should appropriately relax investment conditions and increase investment in services and technologies to expand the improvement of energy and environmental efficiency brought by OFDI.