Study On The Impact Of Heterogeneous Technological Progress On Carbon Emissions In The Yangtze River Economic Belt

With the deepening of globalization and internationalization of economic development,the ecological environment has become a key to curbin the sustainable development of the world economy.As the most carbon-emitting country in the world,China is always trying to shoulder a heavy burden and make due contributions to resolve the contradiction between economic development and ecological environment.In China's "Central Economic Work Conference 2019",it was emphasized that we should rely on technological progress and build an open,collaborative and efficient common technology research and development platform to promote the high-quality development of manufacturing industry,which is closely related to carbon emissions.Therefore,it will be the general trend to discuss carbon emissions from the perspective of technological progress.As the most potential economic zone in China,the Yangtze River Economic Zone is representative to explore the relationship between technological progress and carbon emissions.At the Symposium on further promoting the development of the Yangtze River Economic Zone held in Wuhan on April 26,2018,General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that the ecological environment of the Yangtze River Economic Zone should be placed in an overwhelming position,"correctly grasping the relationship between ecological environment protection and economic development,and exploring a new way to coordinate the promotion of ecological priority and green development".At present,the development mode of the Yangtze River Economic Zone is in the transition stage from "scale expansion" in total amount recognition to "quality improvement and efficiency enhancement" in quality recognition.Exploring the low-carbon development path of the Yangtze River Economic Zone from the perspective of technological progress is in line with the idea and purpose of this mode transformation.Based on this,on the basis of introducing the connotation of the core terms and combing the relevant theoretical basis,this paper first combs the existing literature at home and abroad from three aspects of technological progress,carbon emissions and their relationship.It clarifies the progress of research in this field,and finds out the focus of this study,that is,from the perspective of heterogeneity of technological progress,to explore its impact on carbon emissions.Secondly,using the relevant data of 11 provinces and cities in the Yangtze River Economic Zone from 2000 to 2016,this paper analyzed the current situation of technological progress from four aspects:technological input,technological output,technological niche and heterogeneous technological progress.Based on the carbon emission factor method published by IPCC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change),the carbon emission situation of each province and city in the Yangtze River Economic Zone was estimated,and the total carbon emission and the growth rate of carbon emission were calculated.The current situation of carbon emission is analyzed from three aspects: carbon emission intensity.Then,the relationship between technological progress and carbon emissions is deduced by using Kaya identity and Cobb Douglas production function,and then the mechanism of heterogeneous technological progress on carbon emissions is analyzed in detail by using the previous theory.Secondly,empirical analysis is carried out.Fixed effect test method is used to test the threshold effect from the whole,horizontal and vertical dimensions.Environmental regulation is used as threshold variable to analyze the threshold effect.Then,GMM is used to test the robustness of the above results.This paper mainly explores the impact of heterogeneous technological progress on carbon emissions through five different types of technological progress: broad-sense technological progress,environment-based technological progress,high-tech industry-based technological progress,energy-based technological progress and capital-based technological progress.The STIRPAT model is extended by adding other factors such as trade openness,industrial structure,energy structure,financial development,urbanization and human capital as control variables,in order to make the model more compatible with the real macro-economy and to strongly support the impact of heterogeneous technological progress on carbon emissions.The results of this study are as follows:(1)Generally speaking,fiveheterogeneous technological advance in the Yangtze River Economic Zone have obvious inhibitory effects on carbon emissions,among which energy-embodied technological advance,high-tech industry-embodied technological advance and environmental-embodied technological advances play a leading role;(2)the impact of heterogeneous technological advance on carbon emissions has regional differences between the upper,middle and lower reaches.At present,the effect of carbon emission reduction in the downstream areas is the best;at the same time,there are staged differences in time.(3)There is an environmental Kuznets curve in the Yangtze River Economic Zone,and factors such as social wealth accumulation and energy structure will promote the increase of carbon emissions.Under certain conditions,the degree of openness to the outside world,the adjustment of industrial structure and financial development will restrain the increase of carbon emissions.And there is a threshold for the impact of heterogeneous technological progress on carbon emissions under the role of environmental regulation.Finally,this paper puts forward policy recommendations from three directions: leading power of carbon emission reduction,coordination of upper,middle and lower reaches,and comprehensive improvement of quality taking into account various factors.