Utilizing provincial panel data from China spanning 2000 to 2020, this study constructed an indicator system for high-quality economic development by incorporating 35 indicators. These indicators stem from five domains: innovative, coordinated, green, open, and shared development. To assess carbon finance development, an evaluation system was created using twelve basic indicators derived from three categories: financial environment, energy efficiency, and scientific and technological progression. The entropy weight method facilitated the computation of indices such as the economic quality development, innovative development, coordinated development, green development, open development, shared development, and carbon finance development indices. Both static and dynamic panel models served to empirically ascertain the specific influence of carbon finance on high-quality economic development. Additionally, regional and temporal variances in carbon finance's impact on high-quality economic development were scrutinized. Findings indicate that provinces like Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong, known for advanced economic development, exhibit elevated levels of high-quality economic and carbon finance development. Nonetheless, disparities among provinces are evident. While carbon finance significantly bolsters China's high-quality economic growth, its influence is not uniformly observed across all five development domains. It primarily augments coordinated, green, and shared development. Furthermore, the role of carbon finance in boosting China's high-quality economic development exhibits regional and temporal variations. The promotion of high-quality economic growth can be achieved by fostering an amenable carbon finance environment, addressing aging, maximizing governmental influence, enhancing transportation infrastructure, propelling new urbanization, and refining education standards.

To achieve China’s new development pattern and the “dual carbon” goals, it is necessary to boost emission reduction and high-quality economic development simultaneously. Green credit (GC), consisting of environmental regulation and economic leverage, has a profound impact on improving total factor carbon emission performance (TFCEP). By selecting the panel data of 30 provinces and municipalities in China from 2001 to 2020, this paper constructs a series of panel models to analyze the transmission path of GC to TFCEP. The results indicate that the relationship between GC and TFCEP showed an “inverted-U-shaped” relationship. This is mainly because “energy-saving and emission reduction” first appeared in the government planning outline in 2006, and transition-friendly enterprises successfully transformed with low-interest green credit, thereby effectively improving their TFCEP. However, as environmental regulations continue to increase and the scale of green credit continues to expand, the efficiency of green credit allocation and internal conflicts with other environmental regulation policies are also emerging. At the same time, the advancement of industrial structure and green technology innovation had a significant mediating effect between GC and TFCEP; government quality has a strong moderating effect on the second stage of the mediating process. When GC reaches a certain scale, it tends to restrain TFCEP more in central and western China than in eastern China. Therefore, it is of great significance to continuously increase the scale of GC, promote the advancement of clean energy industrial structure, and improve green technology innovation.

Under the new pattern of “double carbon” development, good ESG performance is the best way to promote the sustainable development of enterprises, and ESG investment strategies are directly affected by the strategic vision of managers. Based on the upper echelons theory and stakeholder theory, this paper selected Chinese A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2022 as samples to empirically analyze the impact of managerial myopia on corporate ESG performance. The results show that managerial myopia significantly inhibits corporate ESG performance, mainly by inhibiting corporate green investment and green innovation sustainability. Furthermore, for state-owned enterprises (SOE), heavy polluting enterprises (HPE), and non-high-tech enterprises, the inhibitory effect of manager myopia on ESG performance is stronger. When the enterprise is in the growth stage, the above inhibition effect is more severe. For external governance, the greater the analyst attention and public environmental attention are, the more conducive they are to alleviating the restraining effect of managerial myopia on enterprise ESG performance. Therefore, effectively improving the cognition level of managers with regard to long- versus short-term profitability and strengthening external supervision are important measures for comprehensively optimizing ESG performance.

In this paper, 22 indexes are selected at three levels, including the informatization development level, the Internet development level, and the digital transaction development level, based on China’s provincial panel data from 2011 to 2020, so as to build a digital economy development index system. Moreover, 28 basic indexes are selected from three aspects, including energy construction, energy production and energy consumption, so as to develop an energy economy development evaluation index system. The development index of China’s digital economy and energy economy are measured by using the entropy weight method. The effect of the digital economy on the energy economy and its mechanism are tested by the static panel, the dynamic panel, and the mediating effect and regulating effect models. The results indicate that the digital economy has pronouncedly promoted the development of China’s energy economy, and the development of the digital economy can have an effect on the rationalization of the industrial structure and then affect the development of the energy economy, and there is an intermediary effect. Moreover, the upgrading of the industrial structure is conducive to regulating the digital economy and facilitates the development of the energy economy. The development of the energy economy can be better promoted by focusing on the coordinated regional layout of the digital economy development, building a reliable energy commodity trading platform, and expediting the optimization and upgrading of the industrial structure.

Agricultural green finance is an important means to boost the development of agricultural green. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2021, this paper theoretically discusses the impact of agricultural green finance on the level of agricultural green development and conducts an empirical study by using the two-way fixed effect model and panel threshold model. The empirical findings show that agricultural green finance can significantly improve the level of agricultural green development mainly through facilitating the level of agricultural green technology innovation. The promoting effect of agricultural green finance on the level of agricultural green development is remarkable in the eastern region and non-major grain-producing areas, but not obvious in the central and western regions and major grain-producing areas. Indeed, the impact has a single threshold effect with environmental regulation as the threshold. Therefore, efforts should be made to improve the level of agricultural green development from the following aspects: vigorously developing agricultural green finance; promoting agricultural green technology innovation; strictly implementing environmental protection policies; and designing appropriate environmental regulation zones.