Ecological Efficiency Of The Yangtze River Economic Belt Under Environmental And Energy Constraints

The Yangtze River Economic Belt strategy is a major strategic deployment by the Party Central Committee and the State Council under the New Normal.It is crucial to China's current and future economic development.From the Yangtze River Economic Belt itself,the core problem is the ecological environment;there are a series of ecological problems,such as ecological degradation,environmental pollution,disorderly development of resources,soil erosion and so on.In September 2014,the State Council issued the "guidance on promoting relying golden waterway of the Yangtze River Economic Belt development"(hereinafter referred to as the "opinions"),means that the Yangtze River Economic Belt construction officially rose to national strategies,in the "opinions" clearly put forward the "build along the green energy industry zone"."Yangtze River Economic Development Plan"(hereinafter referred to as "outline")is to promote the development of the Yangtze River Economic Development Program document,in June 2016 has been issued to the relevant 11 provinces and cities.The outline emphasizes the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt positioning ecological priority,green development,emphasize on innovation drive,the economy of upper,middle and lower reaches can develop coordinated and narrow the gap in development among the east,middle and west and so on.Based on this,the energy and environmental indicators into the index system of evaluation on ecological efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt of environmental and energy constraints,which will be as the strategic target of the Yangtze River Economic Belt to promote the implementation and provide a reference for sustainable economic development in our country under the New Normal.First of all,by combing the literatures about the connotation of ecological efficiency at home and abroad,the specific meaning of the ecological efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt under the constraints of environment and energy is defined.Based on the advantages and disadvantages of the existing methods of measurement of eco-efficiency evaluation,exploratively using the three-stage super-efficiency DEA based on the Malmquist-Luenberger index(ML index)to establish an eco-efficiency evaluation model,combined with the connotation of eco-efficiency,considering both energy and environmental constraints,construct the evaluation index system of eco-efficiency of Yangtze River Economic Belt.The results showed,after the original input output variable was adjusted to the same external environment and the state of luck in the second phase of similar stochastic frontier analysis,the overall ecological efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt has decreased from an average annual growth rate of 6% to 4%.In the upstream region,the third stage ML index decreased from 16% to 12% as compared with the first stage,the average annual growth rate of ML index in the middle reaches decreased from 6% to 4% and there is little change in the downstream zone.The regional differences of ecological efficiency were analyzed by using the coefficient of variation and the Theil index.The results showed that the ecological efficiency of the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River Economic Belt showed obvious differences.Secondly,this paper adopts the spatial econometric method to analyze the influencing factors of ecological efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.The global spatial autocorrelation and regional spatial autocorrelation of regional ecological efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt are studied respectively.Select the speed of economic development,foreign capital utilization,six factors of industrial structure,environmental regulation,energy consumption structure and human resources,using spatial autoregressive model(SAR)and spatial error model(SEM)and spatial Durbin model(SDM)of the individual fixed effect,time effect and individual fixed time fixed effects model to analyze the influencing of each factor.Results show that the speed of economic growth,foreign capital utilization,industrial structure and environmental regulation on the regional ecological efficiency levels has a positive role in promoting,the energy consumption structure exist inhibitory effect on the ecological efficiency level,and human resources,there is no significant impact on the ecological efficiency of Yangtze River Economic Belt.Again,draw on the idea and method of the convergence hypothesis in the new classical economic growth theory,the convergence of the ecological efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt is analyzed by the ?-convergence,the absolute ?-convergence and the conditional ?-convergence of the ecological efficiency.The results show that the overall level of ecological efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt is not showing the ?-convergence but the absolute ?-convergence.In the upper,middle and lower reaches of the three regions,only the upstream region has absolute ?-convergence,and there is no absolute ?-convergence in the middle and lower reaches.Six factors are included in condition ?-convergence test model of ecological efficiency as single control variable and multiple control variables,respectively.It fully reveals the important factors of the ecological efficiency condition ?-convergence in the whole,upper,middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.Finally,according to the environmental and energy constraints of the ecological efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt to carry out a series of research conclusions obtained,put forward suggestions for reference respectively from five respects which effectively accelerate the pace of technological progress,constantly optimize the energy consumption structure,and actively promote the improvement of the level of human resources,to promote the construction of ecological civilization and accelerating ecological integration development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt,in order to better promote the ecological civilization construction of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.The innovation of this paper lies in three aspects.First,on the basis of macro level ecological efficiency evaluation index system,the ecological efficiency evaluation index system of the Yangtze River Economic Belt is more reasonable compared with the existing system.Second,the construction of three stage Malmquist-Luenberger index based on super efficiency DEA model,control the adverse effects of exogenous environmental variables and random errors on the efficiency evaluation,at the same time by using the method of panel data and combining with the concept of distance function,can carry out deeper research on the Yangtze River Economic Belt ecological efficiency level.The last but not the least,using the ideas and methods of the convergence hypothesis for reference,this paper empirically studies the long-term development trend of ecological efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt from three perspectives,it broadens the threshold of the ecological efficiency study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.