A Study Of The Impact Of Green Finance On Green Economy Development In The Yellow River Basin

As the economy of China’s Yellow River Basin continues to grow,elements of economic development such as the natural environment,technology and culture and population have also changed.However,the traditional model of economic development consumes a large amount of natural resources and emits pollutants,causing great harm to the environment.Ecological and environmental issues are becoming increasingly prominent,seriously challenging the balance between economic development and the natural environment.In the context of China’s new economic normal,these conflicts must be more appropriately addressed to achieve green economic development and promote the transformation and optimisation of the economic structure.In October 2021,the "Yellow River Basin Ecological Protection and High-Quality Development Plan Outline" pointed out that solidly promoting the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin is an important strategy for optimising China’s regional economic layout and promoting coordinated regional development.Green finance is a new type of financial development,which plays an important role in promoting the transformation of economic structure and can facilitate the economy to achieve green and sustainable development.Establishing and improving green finance not only promotes the flow of social capital to green economic development investment projects,but also focuses on considering the benefits of a green economy in order to guarantee maximum social welfare.In addition,promoting the development of green finance can also promote the upgrading of the industrial structure of the green economy,from traditional economic growth based on resource consumption and pollution to green economic growth based on green technological innovation.Currently,an important guarantee for the development of a green economy is to improve the green financial system and ensure that sufficient elements of social capital are available.This thesis firstly compares the literature on the definition,measurement,evaluation and impact mechanism of green finance and green economy at home and abroad,and summarises the relationship and mechanism of action between the two on the basis of existing research.The effect of green finance on the green economy,the path mechanism based on green technology innovation and the regulation mechanism of environmental regulation are sorted out.Secondly,the current situation of green finance and green economy development in the Yellow River Basin in China is analysed,and it is found that there are large differences between green finance and green economy in the upper,middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin.Then,a system of indicators for the development of green finance and green economy in the Yellow River Basin is constructed,and the development levels of green finance and green economy are measured based on the entropy weight method and the super-efficient SBM model respectively.Then,based on the panel data of 34 prefecture-level cities in the main stream of the Yellow River Basin in China from 2011 to 2020,the impact of green finance on green economic development in the Yellow River Basin is empirically tested and analysed,and the 34 cities in the Yellow River Basin are divided according to the upper,middle and lower reaches to further test and analyse the regional heterogeneity of the impact of green finance on green economic development.The thesis also empirically tests the mediating effect of green technology innovation and the moderating effect of environmental regulation between green finance and green economy,as well as validating the robustness of the thesis’ s findings by adding control variables for robustness analysis.The findings show that:(1)green finance in the Yellow River Basin of China has a significant positive contribution to the development of the green economy.(2)Green technology innovation plays a mediating role in green finance affecting green economic development in the Yellow River Basin.(3)Environmental regulation has a moderating role between green finance and green economy in the Yellow River Basin,and can promote the positive effect of green finance on green economy.Finally,conclusions are drawn and targeted policy recommendations are made based on the analytical tests in the previous section.