EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Does Tax Competition Among Local Governments Improve the Green Economic Efficiency in the Yellow River Basin?

Jile Sun, Xiao Sun () and Yihan Wang
Additional contact information
Jile Sun: School of Economics, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
Xiao Sun: School of Economics, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
Yihan Wang: School of Economics, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 11, 1-20

Abstract: Green development stands as an imperative pathway for China’s growth model. Enhancing green economic efficiency is crucial to maintaining sustainable development in the Yellow River Basin. The hierarchical governance structure of China’s economic development system inherently links competition among governments to potential impacts on the basin’s green economic efficiency, yet research in this area remains scarce. This study utilizes a panel data structured dataset containing both temporal and cross-sectional dimensions from nine provinces in the Yellow River Basin to investigate how tax competition among local governments affects green economic efficiency. The empirical results demonstrate that tax competition hinders green economic efficiency in the Yellow River Basin, exhibiting spatial heterogeneity in its inhibitory effect. Specifically, the inhibitory effect on the middle reaches is approximately twice as significant as that observed on the upper reaches, while the inhibitory effect on the lower reaches is found to be facilitative. In addition, the upgrading of industrial structure and industrial agglomeration triggered by tax competition partially alleviate the inhibitory effect on green economic efficiency. Therefore, policymakers can promote the sustainable development of the Yellow River Basin by optimizing the tax system, implementing regional differentiation strategies, optimizing industrial layout, and promoting the development of green clusters.

Keywords: Yellow River Basin; tax competition; green economic efficiency; industrial agglomeration; industrial structure upgrading (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/11/5165/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/11/5165/ (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:17:y:2025:i:11:p:5165-:d:1671789

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 ().

 
Page updated 2025-06-05
Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:11:p:5165-:d:1671789