Impacts Of The Belt And Road Initiative On Energy Efficiency Of Countries Along The Routes

Energy plays an important role in guaranteeing the development of economy.While economic continues to develop,energy demand will be gradually increasing.At present,the conflicts between supply and demand of energy are going to rise as countries industrialize and modernize globally.In particular,the countries along the Belt and Road are industrializing intensely to promote economic and social development such as China,which will strengthen the constraints of energy consumption with limited energy utilization technology.Therefore,it is inevitable for countries along the Belt and Road to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy intensity.This way will help these countries to achieve sustainable and healthy development of society certainly.In order to clarify the energy effect of the Belt and Road Initiative on countries along the routes,this paper reviewed domestic and foreign literatures in the fields of energy efficiency and Belt and Road Initiative firstly.We found that researches tended to take care of some particular fields such as foreign investment,international trade and others.Meanwhile,those studies of energy were mostly theoretical discussion rather than empirical study.However,empirical study of energy effects on countries along the routes should be noticed as Belt and Road Initiative is carrying out.In view of this,this paper used the stochastic frontier model for capital input,labor input,energy input,and economic output to measure total factor energy efficiency after analyzing the content of the policy and some theories.On the basis,this paper used the Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Difference model to measure the effect of the Belt and Road Initiative on energy efficiency with the panel data of 83 countries from 1995 to 2018.After that,we conducted a series of robustness tests.In addition,this paper also explored the heterogeneity in countries of the initiative from four aspects,including different routes,level of economic development,regional distribution and energy endowment.Finally,by clarifying the specific construction content of the Belt and Road Initiative,this paper sorted out the influential factors of the effect on energy efficiency including industrial structure,technological progress and infrastructure construction.And this paper used the adjustment effect model to verify the factors.As for the basic regression,the results show that the effect of the Belt and Road Initiative on national energy efficiency presented a “U” shape in the long run,which means the implement of the initiative will first decrease the energy efficiency and then increases it of countries along the routes.When applying energy intensity to make regression analysis,the effect of energy intensity was found to be consistent with energy efficiency on long-term.Subsequently,this paper conducted a series of robustness tests to verify the result,including changing the measurement method of energy efficiency,replacing the regression model,replacing the propensity score matching method,and controlling the linear time trend between groups.The results indicated that the conclusion of the basic regression is still reliable.As for the heterogeneity analysis,firstly,research shows that the initiative has significantly improved the energy efficiency of the countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt,while reducing it of countries along the Maritime Silk Road.Secondly,the energy efficiency of high-income countries has been significantly improved by the initiative,while the energy efficiency of middle-income countries has been significantly reduced.Thirdly,the initiative was negatively correlated with energy efficiency in countries in the Southeast and Central Asia region,and positively correlated with countries in the Middle East and North Africa region,and with no significant impact in the European region.Finally,the initiative has no significant impact on countries with low energy endowments,but has improved the energy efficiency of countries with medium energy endowments and reduced the energy efficiency of countries with high energy endowments.As for the influential factors,the test found that industrial structure has significantly reduced the energy efficiency of treated countries in recent years,while technological progress has significantly improved energy efficiency.At the same time,infrastructure construction of energy,network and communication has a significant pull effect on energy efficiency.