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Will bidirectional FDI impact industrial electricity efficiency in China?

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Abstract

Both “dual cycle” and “carbon neutral” policies have been implemented as national strategies in China. But will “dual cycle” policy help carbon neutral policy and how do “dual cycle” policy affect carbon neutral policy? This paper investigates whether unbalanced bidirectional foreign direct investment (FDI) hinders electricity efficiency. To do so, it uses the super slack-based version of the global Malmquist–Luenberger index to measure electricity efficiency in 30 provinces from 2001 to 2020. This paper uses panel threshold regression model, finds out that bidirectional FDI below 1.7174 will positively impact electricity efficiency, but the positive effects disappear when bidirectional FDI exceeds 1.7174. Thus, balanced bidirectional FDI in province is required to enhance electricity efficiency.

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Data availability

Data sources are outlined above in the Sect. 3.2 Data. What is more, the data and materials used in this paper are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This manuscript has not been submitted to any journal for publication, nor is under review at another journal or other publishing venue.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China(Grant No.21BJL107).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, 250358, Shandong, China

    Feng Yang & Zongbin Zhang

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  1. Feng Yang
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Contributions

This paper is written by the two authors named in the title page. Feng Yang: literature, methodology, software, formal analysis, investigation, resources, writing original draft, visualization. Zongbin Zhang: writing—review and editing, project administration, funding acquisition, supervision, methodology.

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Correspondence to Zongbin Zhang.

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Highlights

• Super SBM-GML is adapted for electricity efficiency.

• Use threshold regression to test the nonlinear relationships between bidirectional FDI and electricity efficiency.

• The bidirectional FDI below 1.7174 will positively impact electricity efficiency.

• The “dual cycle” policy will help to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality in China.

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Yang, F., Zhang, Z. Will bidirectional FDI impact industrial electricity efficiency in China?. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 22494–22508 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-23745-8

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