Green Technology of Foreign Direct Investment on Public Health: Evidence from China

Zhizhong Liu, Guangyue Liu (), Xu Han () and Yingna Chen
Additional contact information
Zhizhong Liu: School of Finance and Trade, Liaoning University, Shenyang 110136, China
Guangyue Liu: School of Finance and Trade, Liaoning University, Shenyang 110136, China
Xu Han: School of Marxism, Liaoning University, Shenyang 110136, China
Yingna Chen: Guangzhou Huashang College, Guangzhou 511300, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 20, 1-16

Abstract: Nowadays, public health issues are increasingly in the spotlight, and the role played by foreign direct investment (FDI) cannot be ignored, especially in developing countries. Scholars have discussed the influencing mechanism of FDI on public health from both positive and negative aspects, but there is little literature focused on the impact of FDI’s green technology spillovers. This paper explores the impact of spontaneous green technology progress induced by FDI, i.e., FDI’s green technology spillover effect, on the public health status of China. It constructs a theoretical model based on the cost discovery theory and uses the Global Malmquist–Luenberger Method to calculate the green technology spillover index; then, it empirically researches the impact of this spillover effect on public health based on the Grossman health product function, using Chinese provincial data from 2007 to 2019. After a series of robustness tests, this paper also discusses the regional heterogeneity and the influencing mechanism. The main conclusions are as follows: Firstly, there is a significant negative correlation between FDI’s green technology spillover and infant mortality, indicating that the spillover effect significantly promotes China’s public health. Secondly, the results of regional heterogeneity show that the spillover effect of green technology presents a decreasing trend from east to west regions. The threshold effect test results also show that, when the level of economic development is extremely low or exceeds a specific threshold, FDI’s green technology spillover will have a positive impact on public health. Finally, FDI’s green technology spillover improves public health by controlling environmental pollution and optimizing industrial activities, but it does not worsen public health by increasing income inequality. The conclusions of this paper provide empirical support and policy suggestions for rationally and effectively utilizing FDI to promote China’s public health in the future.

Keywords: foreign direct investment; green technology spillover; public health; Global Malmquist–Luenberger index; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/20/13526/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/20/13526/ (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:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:20:p:13526-:d:947387

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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