Study On The Impact Of Low-Carbon Pilot Policy On Green Total Factor Productivity In Chinese Cities

China’s low-carbon city pilots have been implemented for many years,nowadays,the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals have become the strategic transformation direction for high-quality economic development,and the construction of low-carbon cities has once again standing at a new historical height.This research focuses on the low-carbon city pilot policy and high-quality economic development,aiming to explore whether the policy can improve the cities’ green total factor productivity,and realize the synergy between economic growth and energy conservation and emission reduction.Therefore,based on the SBM model combined with the Malmquist-Luenberger index,this paper calculates the green total factor productivity,and uses the multi-period difference in difference method to conduct an empirical study on how low-carbon pilot policies affect green total factor productivity.The main conclusions as follows:(1)Under favorable policies,the green economic development strength of the pilot cities is significantly enhanced,and the green total factor productivity is improved;(2)In the robustness test,the treatment group and the control group satisfy the parallel trend assumptions;using the propensity score matching method to perform double difference after rematching,the policy effect is still significant;by randomly selecting the treatment group and the time point of the policy shock,and performing 500 and 1000 simulations respectively,the results show that after excluding the influence of other unobserved factors,the effect of the low-carbon pilot policy is still significant;after excluding the interference of other representative policies,the green economy promotion effect of the lowcarbon city pilot policy can still be effectively released;(3)The results of the heterogeneity test show that under the influence of low-carbon pilot policies,the ability of pilot cities to develop in harmony with the environment and economy has generally improved.Provincial capital cities get more positive feedback after being approved for low-carbon pilot projects,and low-carbon pilot policies in non-resource-based cities have a more obvious effect on promoting urban green economic growth;(4)The results of the mechanism test show that the advanced industrial structure and technological innovation are important engines for the release of low-carbon policy effects,but under the new normal,the rationalization of industrial structure has a weaker driving force for green economic growth,that is,the intermediary effect is not prominent.