Labor, land, and funds are keys to revitalizing rural areas around the world. Previous studies have focused on the impacts of funds on agricultural production, but placed little emphasis on its role in agricultural land-use transformation. Thus, this study explores the quantitative relationship between agricultural credit and farmland abandonment from the perspective of rural revitalization. Using data on 8031 households from 27 provinces obtained from China’s Labor Force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), this study uses a Tobit model to examine the quantitative impacts of informal and formal agricultural credit on farmland abandonment. The results indicate that: (1) Access to agricultural credit helps to reduce farmland abandonment. (2) Compared with formal agricultural credit (provided by institutions), informal agricultural credit (provided by family and friends) is more significant in reducing farmland abandonment. Thus, this study enhances our understanding of the relationship between agricultural credit and farmland use. It will also prompt policymakers to improve rural financial markets in order to reduce the misallocation of farmland resources, thereby improving food security and rural economies.

By collecting the panel data of 29 regions in China from 2008 to 2017, this study used the spatial Durbin model (SDM) to explore the spatial effect of PM_2.5 exposure on the health burden of residents. The most obvious findings to emerge from this study are that: health burden and PM_2.5 exposure are not randomly distributed over different regions in China, but have obvious spatial correlation and spatial clustering characteristics. The maximum PM_2.5 concentrations have a significant positive effect on outpatient expense and outpatient visits of residents in the current period, and the impact of PM_2.5 pollution has a significant temporal lag effect on residents’ health burden. PM_2.5 exposure has a spatial spillover effect on the health burden of residents, and the PM_2.5 concentrations in the surrounding regions or geographically close regions have a positive influence on the health burden in the particular region. The impact of PM_2.5 exposure is divided into the direct effect and the indirect effect (the spatial spillover effect), and the spatial spillover effect is greater than that of the direct effect. Therefore, we conclude that PM_2.5 exposure has a spatial spillover effect and temporal lag effect on the health burden of residents, and strict regulatory policies are needed to mitigate the health burden caused by air pollution.

The rapid expansion of large cities in China has substantially increased energy consumption. With ever stringent environmental policy in force, energy efficiency becomes an important issue. As the emergence of these urban agglomerations (UAs) is usually due to externality effects of spatially concentrated factors, this paper investigates how these factors can affect energy efficiency. Based on mono index, which is used to describe the spatial location information, we have constructed the spatial-structure index of UAs. Using panel data on ten major UAs in China from 2008 to 2017, we find that, in the whole sample, there is an inverse relationship between the spatial structure of UAs and energy efficiency: The higher the concentration degree of factors of UAs, the lower the energy efficiency. Across different regions, however, the relationship between spatial structure and energy efficiency is heterogeneous. The concentration degree of factors in the eastern and central regions of China is relatively high, and the spatial structure there does lead to a decrease in energy efficiency. By contrast, UAs in China’s western region are in a period of factor concentration, with spatial structure playing, in that region, a positive role in improving energy efficiency.