Rural digitalization not only constitutes the strategic orientation of rural revitalization but also serves as a potent means for augmenting farmers’ income. This study regards the implementation of China’s digital village pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment. Based on the panel data of Chinese counties spanning from 2017 to 2022, it employs a multi-period difference-in-differences model to investigate the influence of rural digitalization on the coordinated development of urban and rural areas from the perspective of the income gap. The findings indicate that the policy has significantly reduced the urban–rural income gap. Mechanism analysis reveals that this reduction is achieved through enhancing county innovation capacity, accelerating agricultural digitization, promoting advanced industrial structure, and expanding non-farm employment. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that the policy has a greater impact in regions with less robust digital infrastructure, higher levels of community service, and stronger financial development. Consequently, it is indispensable to enhance the digital literacy of farmers, accelerate the digitalization of agriculture and the upgrading of industrial institutions, promote the balanced development of digital villages in various regions, and fully exert the guiding and facilitating role of community service levels.

Although the economy of a county that is linked to surrounding towns and rural areas constitutes a multiple basic economic unit within China's national economy, it usually exhibits independent characteristics and functions. Consequently, a county's economy plays a critical role in the overall economic development of a country's national economy. We created an evaluation index system based on entropy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of county economy across the entire Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. We found serious imbalances in the development of these counties, with county economies within Beijing and Tianjin being more advanced than those in Hebei Province. Furthermore, there were marked differences between county economies within prefecture-level cities of Hebei Province. The developmental level of counties in cities like Langfang, Tangshan and Chengde was relatively high. Conversely, the level of development of counties in Hengshui, Baoding, Xingtai and Handan was lower. Moreover, there were imbalances among cities in relation to county economic development, especially in Langfang, with smaller differences being found in Hengshui and Qinhuangdao. We analysed and identified the factors influencing differences between counties before providing recommendations.

As a high-quality and sustainable growth model, green development has different economic, ecological, and social dimensions and is strategically important for the realization of modern city construction and the sustainable development of human society. The low-carbon city pilot policy (LCCP) is an innovative initiative for promoting green urban development and building a harmonious society in China. Based on balanced panel data from 277 prefecture-level cities from 2007 to 2020, this paper measures the level of urban green development in terms of three dimensions: green economic growth, ecological welfare enhancement, and social welfare increase. This paper also adopts a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) method for investigating the impact of LCCP on green development with the panel dataset. The results of the study show that: (1) LCCP is generally beneficial to urban green development, and the results still hold after a series of robustness check analyses. (2) The results of the mechanism analysis show that the construction of low-carbon cities has improved the level of green technology innovation, thereby promoting the level of regional green development. Environmental regulation has a masking effect between low-carbon city construction and green development in this study. When environmental regulation is controlled for, the coefficient of the effect of LCCP on green development increases, reflecting that environmental regulation also plays an important role between the two. (3) According to the geographical location, whether it is a resource-based city, and the city cluster, we found that the low-carbon city pilot policy has a significant positive role in promoting green development in the central region, non-resource-based cities, and the Jing-Jin-Ji, but not in the eastern region, the western region, the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta. We also found that in resource-based cities, this effect presents a significant negative relationship. The above findings enrich the literature on low-carbon city pilot policies and green development and provide Empirical evidence for relevant countries and regions to carry out low-carbon city pilots.

Based on the close relationship between real estate and capital financing, this paper specifically discusses the impact of interest rate changes in China on real estate market transactions. Housing price regulation has been a hot and focused topic of economics research. It is important to explore the effect of interest rate on real estate market transactions, for the interest rate is an important tool for the government to carry out macrocontrol of the real estate market and affects residents’ consumption choices of goods. Currently, most scholars believe that interest rate changes have a significant impact on house prices, but their studies are often based on empirical analysis of macro data, making it difficult to exclude the effects of economic differences, geographic characteristics, and other factors. Also, some scholars believe that it is difficult for interest rates to have a long‐term impact on real estate prices. This paper applies the experimental economics method to simulate real estate transactions in the real market and control the irrelevant variables to study the movements of housing prices, transaction volumes, consumer transaction intentions and bubble indices under different deposit and lending rates. The results show that: (1) The level of deposit interest rate has a significant inhibitory effect on housing price and a significant promoting effect on real estate market transaction volume and traders’ house‐buying behavior. The higher the level of deposit interest rate is, the better the degree of regulating house prices deviating from the theoretical price is and the better the effect of inhibiting market bubbles. (2) The level of lending rate has a significant inhibiting effect on the volume of real estate transactions and a significant promoting effect on the house‐buying behavior of traders, but its effect on housing prices and market bubbles is not significant. The higher the level of lending rate is, the better the degree of regulating housing prices deviating from the theoretical price is. (3) The effect of deposit interest rate and lending rate policies on the house selling behavior of market traders is not significant.

Introduction: In the search for sustainable development, urban eco-development is becoming a core agenda for all countries. China’s low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policy is an important initiative to promote urban low-carbon governance. And exploring the direction of LCCP policy is an important step towards sustainable urban development.Methods: Super-SBM is employed to calculate urban ecological efficiency using panel data from 254 prefecture-level cities between 2007 and 2020. The methods of kernel density estimation and spatial Markov chains are applied to the spatial analysis of urban ecological efficiency. The spatial analyses examine the spatiotemporal patterns and dynamic evolving trends of urban ecological efficiency. Additionally, the multiperiod difference-in-differences method is used to assess the impact of the LCCP policy on urban ecological efficiency. On this basis, we apply the method of mechanism analysis to discuss the influence mechanism.Results: The results indicate that urban ecological efficiency gradually forms a continuous spatial clustering pattern, although there is a widening tendency in the absolute differences. In the subsequent transfer process, the spatial factor plays a highly significant role. Benchmark regressions and auxiliary robustness tests demonstrate that the LCCP policy is effective in improving urban ecological efficiency. Further analysis shows that the effect of LCCP policies on ecological efficiency can be transmitted by promoting green technology innovation as well as facilitating a low-carbon transition in the energy mix. The above findings indicate the presence of the "Green Innovation Effect" and the "Decoupling Effect".Discussion: These discoveries enhance the theoretical framework of urban ecology and offer valuable insights for other regions seeking to implement low-carbon urban governance.

This study integrates experimental design with econometric techniques to examine the impact of information disclosure on trading prices, trading volume, and market volatility. Using a double auction model, we find that as information disclosure increases, trading prices and trading volume remain the same. However, the volatility in the marketplace is significantly reduced. This overall market efficiency gain is robust to a number of different efficiency metrics.