Reducing energy intensity is conducive to the sustainable use of non-renewable fossil energy, and is also one of the main strategies to deal with climate change and environmental degradation. The effect of national macro-level factors on energy intensity has been basically confirmed, but the effect of regional low-carbon policy remains to be investigated. Based on this, our analysis exploits China’s “low-carbon city pilot” policy as a quasi-natural experiment and conducts the difference-in-difference resign. We collect the panel data of 271 cities in China from 2006 to 2016. The empirical results show that: first, the low-carbon city pilot policy can effectively reduce the energy intensity. Second, there exist heterogeneous effects on energy intensity among different cities, and the inhibition effects in eastern cities, high economic development cites, and non-old industrial-base cities are more significant. Third, the policy mainly affects regional energy intensity through technological innovation rather than industrial structure optimization mechanism.

Green loans are a way of financing green innovation. Two important factors, the lending interest rate and the loaning scale, should be focused on. In this paper, we explore the impact of lending interest rates and loaning scale on green innovation. We show that the incentive of green innovation strongly depends on the lending interest rate and the loaning scale through model analysis. Moreover, the dependence is summarized as a two-step strategy. In the first step, the lending interest rate should be lower than some rate thresholds given in the paper. Otherwise, green innovation fails to be stimulated. In the second step, if the lending interest rate is lower than the given rate threshold, then the practical loaning scale should lie between two thresholds of loaning scale derived in the paper, such that the green innovation will be stimulated. What is more, to guarantee the green effect of the innovation on the environment, we construct a threshold of loaning scale. If the loaning scale is larger than this threshold, then the innovation will show green effect on the environment. Otherwise, green innovation loses its environmental significance. The government stimulates green innovation through government subsidy. In this paper, we consider three kinds of government subsidy, including a subsidy for the bank, subsidy for the enterprise before and after implementing green innovation. Some appropriate government subsidy scales are presented.

In recent years, the frequency adjustment of U.S. monetary policy has a dynamic and global impact on other countries' economy. Based on the financial conditions index (FCI), the paper employs the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive model with stochastic volatility (TVP-VAR-SV) and spillover index respectively to investigate the time-varying impact of U.S. financial conditions (UFCI) on China's inflation (CINF) and its impact mechanisms. Some results are achieved as follows: first, the impacts of UFCI on CINF vary greatly over time both in the dimension of action duration and time point. Second, the effects of UFCI on CINF directly relate to different types of major events, and they are heterogeneous in action duration, degree, direction as well as the trend and range of fluctuations. In addition, UFCI can work on CINF through trade flow and China's financial market, and the China's financial market plays a main conductive role, and its conductive effect changes over time.

Land use efficiency is one of the core elements for the high-quality development of food production and agricultural industry, and land transfer can optimize the allocation of land resources, adjust the structure of the agricultural industry, and drive the improvement of agricultural labor productivity, thereby promoting land use efficiency and realizing agricultural modernization. Taking 30 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) in Chinese mainland from 2005 to 2019 as the research objects, this paper adopts panel OLS and panel Tobit estimation to study the overall impact of land transfer on land use efficiency. In addition, this paper explores the heterogeneous impact of land transfer on land use efficiency through cluster analysis and panel regression. Finally, this paper further analyzes the influence mechanism of land transfer on land use efficiency through industrial structure and labor productivity. The following conclusions are drawn. Firstly, land transfer significantly promotes the improvement of provincial rural land use efficiency. Secondly, the land use efficiency of various provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) in Chinese mainland has the characteristics of periodic changes. From the perspective of time and space, there are large differences in the land use efficiency of various provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, and there are regional heterogeneity effects of land transfer on provincial rural land use efficiency. Thirdly, the industrial structure can enhance the promotion effect of land transfer on land use efficiency, and land transfer can promote the improvement of land use efficiency by improving agricultural labor productivity.

In this paper, 3,493 non-financial listed companies in China from 2007 to 2018 are selected as samples to study the impact of corporate financialization on green technology innovation through the panel regression model as well as the mediating effect model, so as to identify whether enterprises tend to financial speculation or capital investment. The main conclusions are as follows. First, corporate financialization has a speculative tendency instead of strategic capital investment. Second, corporate financialization shows heterogeneous impact on green technology innovation, which is dominated by capital expenditure. Third, the heterogeneity is reflected in two aspects: attribute characteristics and external environment. The attribute characteristics of the enterprise includes whether the industry belongs to pollution industry and the ownership structure. The external environment includes the location of enterprise and the degree of financing constraints. Fourth, there are significant differences between attribute characteristics and external environment of enterprises in the impact of financialization decision-making behavior. The deviation caused by enterprise attributes is less than 10%, but the deviation caused by external environment is close to 80%.

This paper takes 1179 non-financial listed companies in China from 2010 to 2021 as samples and constructs a panel fixed-effect model to examine the effect of corporate financialization on sustainable development ability. Also, we further use the moderating effect model and the mediating effect model to explore the moderating roles played by financing constraints and environmental uncertainty, as well as the influencing mechanisms transmitted by financialization motives. The results are as follows: (1) There is a significant and robust inverted U-shaped relationship between corporate financialization and sustainable development ability, which indicates the existence of a moderate range of corporate financialization in regard to the sustainable development ability of companies. (2) Financing constraints and environmental uncertainty have moderating effects on the inverted U-shaped relationship between corporate financialization and sustainable development ability. With high financing constraints (environmental uncertainty), the sustainable development ability of companies reacts more sensitively to thep change in corporate financialization level. (3) Companies hold financial assets with precautionary saving motive in the low financialization level, and the reservoir effect plays a dominant role. The sustainable development ability of companies is enhanced. However, companies increase their holdings of financial assets for speculative arbitrage motive in the high financialization level, where the short-term wealth effect becomes dominant. The results of this paper are helpful for companies’ decision-making in sustainable development and for government policy formulation in economic development.