Space-time Evolution Of Green Economy Efficiency In The Yangtze Economic Belt

As an important breakthrough to achieve economic,social and environmental sustainable development,green development is gradually becoming the consensus of global sustainable development goals and human development.Many countries regard the development of green industry as an important measure to promote economic restructuring,highlighting the concept and connotation of green.In China,green development is not only an idea,but also a change to high-quality development.Green development is an economic growth and social development mode with the goal of efficiency,harmony and sustainability.The research of green development efficiency has become the key topic to promote green development.The Yangtze River Economic Belt is the largest river basin economy in China.The Outline of the Development Plan of the Yangtze River Economic Belt emphasizes that the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt must adhere to ecological priority,green development,joint protection and no major development.Therefore,it is of special scientific and practical significance to study the efficiency of green economy with the Yangtze River Economic Belt as a sample.Green development emphasizes the benefit maximization of resource input and output.In this paper,129 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt were selected as the research samples,and 8 years from 2011 to 2018 were selected as the research period.Firstly,the green economic efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt was measured by establishing an input-output index system and using the SBM model with non-expected outputs considered.The comprehensive efficiency was decomposable into pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency.Second,from the temporal evolution characteristics,spatial pattern,spatial differences and correlation of the Yangtze river economic belt space-time evolution of the green economy efficiency analysis,among them,the spatial difference and can be further decomposed into group differences and differences between groups,in this paper,the Yangtze river economic belt can be divided into upper,middle and lower reaches three group,group differences within the said of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze river economy belt,regional difference,difference between group said,the difference between the three regions of the middle and lower reaches.Finally,six influencing factors,including economic development level,economic openness degree,industrial structure,factor endowment structure,government financial strength and education level,are selected to analyze the influencing factors of green economic efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt by using Tobit model,and the countermeasures to improve the green economic efficiency are proposed.The main research conclusions are as follows:(1)The green economic efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt shows a fluctuating growth trend.The efficiency of green economy increased from 0.5041 in2011 to 0.5697 in 2018,with an average annual growth rate of 1.86%,among which,there was a short decline in 2015.The increase of green economic efficiency in most cities of the Yangtze River Economic Belt accounted for 72.09% of all cities,indicating that the green economic efficiency in most cities of the Yangtze River Economic Belt has been improved.From the perspective of comprehensive efficiency decomposition,the growth of pure technical efficiency is relatively slow,with an average annual growth rate of 0.56%.Scale efficiency has been at a high level and growing fast for a long time,with an average annual growth rate of 1.01%.(2)The green economic efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt shows a spatial distribution pattern of high in the east and low in the west.The efficiency of green economy has significant correlation with the level of regional economic development.The pure technical efficiency presents a "saddle shape" spatial distribution with low middle and high east and west.During the study period,the scale efficiency showed a stable spatial distribution pattern of high in the east,middle and low in the west.(3)The green economic efficiency of cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt shows a significant spatial correlation.The green economic efficiency mainly forms the high-high agglomeration area with Shanghai and its surrounding cities as the center,and the low-low agglomeration area with Sichuan-Yunnan border as the axis spreading to the north and south.High-low agglomeration and low-high agglomeration are few and scattered.The spatial agglomeration characteristics of pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency are similar to those of comprehensive efficiency.(4)The spatial difference of green economic efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt showed a trend of decreasing first and then increasing,and the fluctuation range was large.From the perspective of difference decomposition,the differences in green economic efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt during2013-2015 were mainly intra-regional differences(intra-group differences).Especially in 2015,the contribution rate of intra-group differences was as high as 92.51%,indicating that the differences in green economic efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt during 2013-2015 mainly came from the regional differences in the upper,middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Basin.From 2017 to 2018,the green economic efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt was dominated by inter-regional differences(inter-group differences).(5)From the factors that influence the efficiency of the Yangtze river economic belt each level city green economy,the level of economic development,foreign investment,industrial structure,factor endowment structure,the government’s financial strength,the six factors such as level of education all through the test of significance,economic development level,the local financial strength of regional green mainly show the significant positive role in promoting economic development;The negative effects of foreign investment and industrial structure indicate the existence of the "pollution paradise" hypothesis.However,factor endowment structure and education level have different effects on regions with different stages of economic development.Finally,based on the above research results,this paper puts forward specific policy recommendations for the improvement of green economy efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.