Productivity has long been the fundamental driver of human social progress and national prosperity. Against the backdrop of technological advancement and social development, New Quality Productive Forces (NQPFs) have emerged as a new form of productivity, serving as a key focus for corporate transformation and upgrading as well as sustainable national development. Based on the panel data of 28,107 listed companies in China from 2011 to 2022, this study employs a three-way fixed-effects model to investigate the impact of green finance (GF) on corporate NQPFs. The main findings are as follows: First, GF exhibits a significant positive correlation with the enhancement of corporate NQPFs. Second, financing constraints and corporate social responsibility strengthen the empowering effect of GF on corporate NQPFs, while environmental law enforcement weakens this effect, reflecting a “synergistic dilemma” between government intervention and market mechanisms in promoting corporate NQPFs. Third, the effect of GF on corporate NQPFs shows significant heterogeneity depending on environmental and social risks, the nature of property rights, public attention, and firm size. These findings provide important insights for optimizing green finance policies and enhancing corporate productivity.

As the severity of climate change escalates, agriculture, being one of the primary contributors to global carbon emissions, has progressively come under scrutiny. Thus, fostering a low-carbon agriculture system is paramount in achieving the ambitious “dual carbon” goals of reaching peak carbon and attaining carbon neutrality. This study engages urban panel data from the Yellow River Basin spanning 2001-2020 to compute the agricultural carbon emissions therein. The research harnesses a spatial Durbin model to probe the influencing mechanisms and spatial effects while examining the implications of agricultural mechanization on such emissions. The findings reveal: (1) From a spatiotemporal perspective, total agricultural carbon emissions within the Yellow River Basin exhibited an oscillating “M”-shaped pattern. Upon analyzing spatial patterns, the carbon emissions were highest downstream, moderate midstream, and least upstream, signifying pronounced regional disparities. (2) Concerning the causal elements, agricultural mechanization, from a direct effects standpoint, tends to somewhat diminish local agricultural carbon emissions. Regarding spillover effects, agricultural mechanization similarly represses carbon emissions in adjacent locales. (3) Heterogeneity analysis suggests that in the midstream cities, agricultural mechanization results in a significant decrease in agricultural carbon emissions. Contrarily, upstream and downstream cities witness a stimulating effect. At present, with China's agricultural economy navigating intense environmental pressure, these insights lend invaluable support to practices aimed at curbing agricultural carbon emissions. By shedding light on the interaction between agricultural mechanization and carbon emissions, they offer a novel perspective and empirical data. In turn, these can contribute to formulating policies that seek to reignite rural areas while concurrently striving to meet the strategic objectives of peak carbon and carbon neutrality.

This study examines how business activity responds to local taxation, specifically property tax and local sales tax, in Nevada. Using county-level data for the period 1999–2014, we assess the impact of these taxes on various business activity indicators, including employment, annual payroll, the number of establishments, and the number of small establishments categorized by size. Unlike previous studies that primarily focus on state-level taxation, our research delves into the effects of local tax instruments. By analyzing different components of the property tax (e.g., school district, county, and special district rates) and evaluating the specific effects of local sales tax changes, we provide a nuanced understanding of the local tax–business activity relationship. To address potential policy endogeneity in the sales tax rate, we instrument the sales tax rate using the lagged share of registered Democrats and implement an IV (control-function) spatial Durbin framework, ensuring robust estimates of within-period associations and spatial spillovers. Our analysis is intentionally confined to the 1999–2014 institutional regime, when Nevada businesses were primarily exposed to property and sales taxes. The estimates should, therefore, be interpreted as evidence on how the local tax mix and its components correlate with business activity under this pre-2015 fiscal structure, rather than as a direct forecast for the post-2015 environment shaped by subsequent policy changes and macroeconomic shocks. Across specifications, the IV-identified total effect of the sales tax rate is consistently negative for establishment-related outcomes. Nonetheless, the results remain informative for current debates on the design of local revenue systems because the underlying tax–service bundle and cross-jurisdictional spillover mechanisms continue to be central to local public finance.