Greening through economic complexity: New evidence from Chinese cities

Mengying Ni, Zimin Liu and Zhuang Zhang

Economic Analysis and Policy, 2025, vol. 85, issue C, 2063-2090

Abstract: “The stronger get stronger, the weaker get weaker”? Does the process of urban economic complexity exhibit a preference for green? This research utilizes the reflection iteration method to measure the economic complexity of Chinese cities and examines the impact of economic complexity on urban green development and its underlying mechanisms. The results are as follows: (1) the enhancement of economic complexity promotes the green development of urban economies, with enduring effects; (2) the green impact of economic complexity exhibits an increasing marginal trend, meaning that the higher the urban complexity, the stronger the marginal effect; (3) mechanism analysis indicates that economic complexity, on one hand, optimizes the developmental path of urban industries by squeezing out pollution-intensive and resource-dependent industries; on the other hand, economic complexity contributes to strengthening the urban innovation ecosystem, such as enhancing levels of urban innovation, entrepreneurship, technological advancement, R&D collaboration, and knowledge spillover. Additionally, the impact of economic complexity on urban green development is moderated by external constraints such as energy efficiency, environmental regulations, and public supervision; (4) heterogeneity analysis reveals that the green impact effect of economic complexity varies with the level of talent accumulation, administrative hierarchy, geographical location and industrial layout. This study offers valuable insights for optimizing urban development path and promoting green transformations in urban areas.

Keywords: Economic complexity; Green development; Path dependence; Innovation ecosystem; External constraints (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592625000645
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecanpo:v:85:y:2025:i:c:p:2063-2090

DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2025.02.034

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Analysis and Policy is currently edited by Clevo Wilson

More articles in Economic Analysis and Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().