Low-carbon city construction (LCC) is an important strategy for countries desiring to improve environmental quality, realize cleaner production, and achieve sustainable development. Low-carbon cities have attracted widespread attention for their attempts to coordinate the relationship between environmental protection and economic development. Using the panel data from 2006 to 2017 of prefecture-level cities in China, this study applied the difference-in-differences (DID) method to analyze the effects of LCC on the total factor productivity (TFP) of the cities and its possible transmission mechanism. The results show significantly positive effects on TFP, but the effects on each component of TFP are different. Although the LCC has promoted technical progress and scale efficiency, it has inhibited technical efficiency. The accuracy of the results has been confirmed by several robustness tests. Mechanism analysis showed that the pilot policy of low-carbon cities has promoted technical progress and scale efficiency by technological innovation and the upgrading of industrial structure, but resource mismatches among enterprises have been the main reason for reduced technical efficiency. Regional heterogeneity analysis showed that the effects on TFP in the eastern region have been more significant than in the central and western regions. In the eastern region, they have promoted technical progress, while in the central and western regions, they have promoted technical progress and scale efficiency but hindered technical efficiency. This paper presents our findings for the effects of LCC on economic development and provides insightful policy implications for the improvement of technical efficiency in low-carbon cities.

Food safety is related to public health, social welfare, and human survival, all of which are important and pressing areas of concern all over the world. The government plays an increasingly important role in the supervision of food safety. The role of the government, however, is also controversial. Using provincial panel data of China from 2005 to 2015, the present study intends to shed light on the associations between government intervention and food safety performance under two scenarios of local government—competition and noncompetition. This will be accomplished through an exploratory spatial data analysis and a spatial econometric model. The results reveal negative associations between food safety performance and government intervention without considering local government competition. As was also observed, government intervention not only inhibits the improvement of food safety in the region, but also has a negative spatial spillover effect on food safety in neighboring provinces. This is the result after considering government competition, thus, showing the competitive strategic interaction of the “race to the bottom”. Further analysis reveals that, if geographically similar regions are selected as reference objects, the food safety performance of each province will have a stronger tendency to compete for the better. If regions with similar economic development levels are selected as reference objects, food safety performance will have a stronger tendency to compete for the worse. This work provides new evidence for the relationships between government intervention and food safety, and, also, proposes some insightful implications for policymakers for governing food safety.

The impact of the medical insurance system (MIS) on the health of older adults is a key element of research in the field of social security. Because China’s MIS consists of different types of insurance, and the benefits and levels of coverage received by participating in different medical insurance vary, different medical insurance may have a differential impact on the health of older adults. This has rarely been studied before. In this paper, the panel data of the third phase of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) conducted in 2013, 2015 and 2018 were used to investigate the impact of participation in social medical insurance (SMI) and commercial medical insurance (CMI) on the health of urban older adults and its mechanism relationship. The study found that SMI had a positive impact on the mental health of older adults, but only in the eastern region. Participation in CMI was positively correlated with the health of older adults, but this association was relatively small and was only observed in the sample of older adults aged 75 years and above. In addition, future life security plays an important role in the process of improving the health of older adults through medical insurance. Both research hypothesis 1 and research hypothesis 2 were verified. The results of this paper show that the evidence of the positive effect of medical insurance on the health of older adults in urban areas proposed by scholars is not convincing enough. Therefore, the medical insurance scheme should be reformed, focusing not only on coverage, but on enhancing the benefits and level of insurance, so as to enhance its positive impact on the health of older adults.

The creation of food safety demonstration cities (CFSDC) is among the key measures the Chinese government implemented to address the intensifying food safety problem. While effectively managing food safety issues, whether this measure will have an impact on agricultural development in China remains unknown. In this paper, based on panel data from 277 cities in China from 2011 to 2019, the impact of the construction of food safety demonstration cities on agricultural development is empirically examined using the difference-in-differences (DID) model. The results show that the CFSDC significantly improves the level of agricultural development, which still holds after various robustness tests. Analysis of the underlying mechanism indicates that the CFSDC promotes urban agricultural development by accelerating both technological innovation and industrial restructuring. The results of heterogeneity analysis show that the policy effects of the CFSDC exhibit significant heterogeneous characteristics depending on city size, city location, and city administrative level. The findings contribute to the understanding of the relationship between policy pilot projects and agricultural development and provide empirical support for promoting the governance of food safety issues and agricultural development.