Impact Of Trade Liberalization On Energy And Environmental Efficiency

To study the status of China’s energy and environmental efficiency and the impact of trade openness on it.This paper examines the overall and regional status of energy and environmental efficiency through status quo analysis,hypotheses,and empirical tests,and explores the different ways in which trade openness affects energy and environmental efficiency.First of all,through the non-radial direction distance function of DEA,the energy and environmental efficiency of 30 provinces and municipalities in China from 1997 to 2016 are calculated.The results show that China’s overall efficiency level is relatively low,but there are obvious regional differences,which gradually decrease from eastern to central and western regions.From the perspective of time series analysis,the efficiency of each province in each year showed a trend of decline.Secondly,this article analyzes the impact mechanism of trade opening on energy and environmental efficiency,and believes that trade opening may affect energy and environmental efficiency through three intermediary effects,namely,scale,structure and technical effects.Furthermore,this paper conducts an empirical test on the above-mentioned impact mechanism through the panel fixed effect model,the Tobit model,and the threshold effect model.The results show that the overall effect of trade openness on the efficiency is a positive effect,mainly because the positive effects of scale effect and technological effect are greater than the negative effects of industrial and property rights structure effects.In terms of the threshold effect,there is a single threshold effect on the level of urbanization.With the advancement of urbanization,the positive impact has weakened,and urbanization is manifested as scale expansion,and it is more obvious in the western region;There is a single threshold effect on the level of environmental regulation,and the regulation is conducive to the improvement of efficiency in the western region,but not conducive to that in the eastern and central regions.Finally,based on the above research conclusions,this article mainly proposes specific policy recommendations to improve China’s energy and environmental efficiency through three channels: scale,structure,and technology orientation.At the same time,it also analyzes different environmental policies in different export proportions and environmental regulations.