Micro-credit for poverty alleviation is an important financial measure of targeted poverty reduction and rural revitalization in China. This paper employs the OLS model and Logit model to empirically test the effect of micro-credit for poverty alleviation on the income level and stability of income growth of farmers based on the field survey data of 458 registered poverty-stricken farmer households in Fuping County and Quyang County of Hebei Province. The results suggest that micro-credit for poverty alleviation can increase farmers’ income, stabilize the growth of their income, and exert significant short-term and long-term effects on income growth and poverty alleviation. The specialized farmer cooperatives, the scale of production and operation, the proportion of family labor force, and the education level of the head of the farmer’s household exert a significantly positive effect on the farmers’ income and the stable growth of their income. There is a significant interaction between micro-credit for poverty alleviation and specialized farmer cooperatives. The physical conditions of family members exert a negative effect on the stable growth of their income, and other financing channels have no significant effect.

High land use efficiency is the key to improving total factor productivity, and also an important force behind achieving sustained economic growth. Existing studies have mainly focused on the land use efficiency of the industry sector. Yet, the issue of land use efficiency of the service sector (SLUE) has been largely overlooked. This study examines regional differences and efficiency decomposition by using a slack based model (SBM) of undesirable output, and the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) under a data envelopment analysis framework. The results reveal that: (1) In China, the land use efficiency of the service sector is unbalanced, showing an inverted growth law of “low in developed areas and high in backward areas”. (2) The land use efficiency of the service sector can be decomposed into technical progress, pure technical efficiency, and scale efficiency. From the decomposition results, the growth rate of pure technical efficiency presents a trend of “low in the east and high in the west”; the scale efficiency also falls into the situation of weak group growth. Technological progress has maintained steady improvement. (3) The coordinated improvement of land use efficiency of the service sector needs to focus on resolving the “beggar-thy-neighbor” issue caused by existing large regional differences. In this article, the puzzle of land use efficiency differences in the service industry is well solved, and thus provides valuable enlightenment for the benign growth of service industries in countries and regions around the world.

Many countries and regions around the world are experiencing this development dilemma, and Northeast China is a typical representative. To explore the reason for the backwardness of Northeast China, we analyze the formation mechanism and efficiency of enterprise agglomeration in this research. Based on the panel data of 34 prefectural level or above cities in Northeast China and 241 citescities in other regions from 1999 to 2015, a fixed effects panel model is used, considering enterprise agglomeration, foreign direct investment (FDI), investment in fixed assets, and the non-agricultural industry structure. It is found that enterprise agglomeration has a highly significant negative impact on urban productivity in Northeast China, and this phenomenon of agglomeration diseconomy in the northeast is most significant among the four regions of the country. Furthermore, according to the moderation mechanism analysis, the enterprise agglomeration in Northeast China reduces the pulling effects of fixed asset investment and FDI on economic efficiency but enhances the promotion effect of the non-agricultural industry structure on urban productivity. After the robustness test and extension analysis, this study determines that the enterprise agglomeration in Northeast China does not effectively stimulate the driving role of investments. Finally, we discuss measures that can help resolve the current agglomeration diseconomy problem in Northeast China and achieve sustainable development.