Borrowing Size and Urban Green Development Efficiency in the City Network of China: Impact Measures and Size Thresholds

Aijun Guo, Peixian Liu, Fanglei Zhong, Chunlin Yang and Xijing Luo
Additional contact information
Aijun Guo: School of Economics, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
Peixian Liu: School of Economics, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
Fanglei Zhong: School of Economics, Minzu University of China, Beijing 100081, China
Chunlin Yang: School of Economics, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
Xijing Luo: School of Economics, Minzu University of China, Beijing 100081, China

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: Cities enhance the efficiency of green development among themselves through their borrowing population, economic activities density and advanced functions, but the positive green effect of the borrowing size is affected by the city size. Using panel data of 280 prefecture-level cities in China for the period 2009–2019, this paper measures the borrowing size in three dimensions, namely the borrowing population size, borrowing economic activity density and borrowing advanced functions, and uses the super efficiency slacks-based measure (SBM) model, including non-desired outputs, to measure the urban green development efficiency. After that, this paper empirically examines the effect of the borrowing size on the urban green development efficiency in the Chinese urban network using a double-fixed-effect model. A panel threshold regression with city size as the threshold variable is conducted to evaluate the nonlinear relationship quantitatively between the borrowing size and urban green development efficiency. The results show that all three dimensions of the borrowing size have positive effects on the urban green development efficiency. There is a significant double-threshold effect between the borrowing size and urban green development efficiency; under the threshold of the city size, there is a U-shaped relationship between the borrowing population size, borrowing advanced functions and urban green development efficiency, whereas there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the borrowing economic activity density and urban green development efficiency. Accordingly, this paper argues that government should pay attention to the role of the borrowing size in promoting urban green development efficiency and reasonably expand the city size.

Keywords: borrowing size; urban green development efficiency; urban network; city size; panel threshold model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/4/493/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/4/493/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:4:p:493-:d:781976

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().