The global warming phenomenon has undoubtedly brought unprecedented challenges to rice production, vital for food security in Southeast Asian countries and China. Most studies on this topic have focused narrowly on the direct effect of climate change on rice yield, neglecting the indirect effect. Using panel data from 30 provinces in China from 1990 to 2016, in this paper, we propose and test a mediational effect model to examine the mechanisms of how climate change affects rice yield. We find that climate change leads to changes in functional irrigation areas, farmers’ fertilizing behavior, and agricultural labor supply, and it is these mediating factors that effectively transmit the impact of climate change to China’s rice production. The positive indirect impact of climate change on the factors of production often partially or overly compensates for the adverse direct effect of climate change on rice yield, leading to a surprising observation of the association of climate change with increased rice yield, at least in the short run. We also provide some preliminary policy advice based on the analysis.

By optimizing enterprises’ capital structure, the deleveraging policy has a close relationship with green innovation. Taking the Opinions on Actively and Steadily Reducing Enterprise Leverage issued by the State Council of China in 2016 as an exogenous shock and utilizing the panel date of listed manufacturing enterprises in China from 2010 to 2019, this paper constructs a DID model and conducts a series of robustness tests, which quantitatively confirm that the deleveraging policy can play a positive role in improving enterprise green innovation. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the deleveraging policy can promote the application of green invention patents to a greater extent and has a greater effect on green innovation in state-owned enterprises, large-scale enterprises, technology-intensive enterprises, and enterprises in financially developed regions. Ultimately, the mechanism test confirms that the deleveraging policy provides long-term funds for enterprise green innovation by promoting enterprise equity financing. And with the strengthening of shareholders’ supervision and management, it also effectively ensures the stable development of green innovation.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16226-x

Although forest tenure devolution has been widely implemented, limited research has examined the carbon sequestration effects of property rights, particularly the interactions among rights within the tenure bundle. This research quantifies the structure of forest tenure at the village level over a 20-year period (2000–2019) and links it with village-year satellite observations of forest carbon sequestration. Using two-way fixed effects regression, interaction effect models, and mediation analysis, the research examines the carbon responses to devolved forest tenure, with particular attention to the interactions among tenure rights and the heterogeneity across forest types. Empirical results indicate that the logging right constitutes the core component of the tenure bundle that promotes carbon sequestration in mature forests and shrublands. When the logging right was completely absent, the impact of ownership on carbon sequestration became insignificant. Tenure rights bundles interact significantly in shaping carbon sequestration outcomes in mature forests. Specifically, longer tenure duration reinforces the effects of ownership and logging rights, whereas transferability tends to substitute for their returns. In terms of young plantations, only official certification of ownership would promote their carbon sequestration and there are no interaction impacts between rights. Further analyses combining farmer behavior find that the reduction in logging intensity, rather than frequency, is a significant channel for logging rights to promote carbon sequestration of mature stands. Ownership increases the frequency but the intensity of afforestation/reforestation, which in turn increases carbon sequestration of young plantations.