Silk Road Economic Belt strategy and industrial total-factor productivity: Evidence from Chinese industries
Management of Environmental Quality
ISSN: 1477-7835
Article publication date: 8 October 2018
Issue publication date: 7 January 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) strategy and its role of industrial productivity in China.
Design/methodology/approach
To identify the causal effect of this strategy on industrial sustainable development, the authors first use the slacks-based measure model to calculate industries’ total-factor productivity (TFP) considered with CO2 emissions as undesirable output on the provincial level. Then, the authors use the PSM-DID method to identify the difference of TFPs between provinces and industries before and after the implementation of SREB strategy.
Findings
However, the authors find that there is no difference or even a relative decrease in TFPs of industries in target provinces after the implementation of the strategy, which reveals that the SREB strategy does not play a positive role of the industries’ sustainable development in years of 2014 and 2015.
Originality/value
The value of this result is to identify the short-term impact of SREB strategy and to seek for probable causes and appropriate solutions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank those that have given constructive comments and feedback to help improve this paper. Support was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71473233).
Citation
Feng, J., Zhao, L., Jia, H. and Shao, S. (2019), "Silk Road Economic Belt strategy and industrial total-factor productivity: Evidence from Chinese industries", Management of Environmental Quality, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 260-282. https://doi.org/10.1108/MEQ-06-2018-0109
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited