Syphilis caused a substantial economic burden on patients, their families, and society in Guangdong. Household productivity and intangible costs both shared positive relationships with local economic levels. Strengthening the prevention and effective treatment of early syphilis could greatly help to lower the economic burden of syphilis.

Major economies, such as the United States, European Union (EU), Japan, and China have enacted Circular Economy Promotion Laws (CEPLs) to promote the development of the recycling industry. The Urban Mining Pilot Policy (UMPP) is an essential provision of the CEPL in China, which promotes a circular economy and environmentally friendly industries and society. In China, the Urban Mining Pilot City (UMPC) program facilitates the addressing of the negative environmental impacts of industrial and urban waste, and conservation of scarce primary resources, which are necessary for sustainable industrialization and urban sustainability in developing countries. In the present study, a time-varying difference-in-difference analysis of city-level panel data was conducted to investigate the impact of the UMPC program on pollution reduction in China. The results indicated that the UMPC program has improved municipal waste management efficiency and environmental quality significantly, with robust results across various models and datasets. Additionally, the mediation test showed the positive impacts of the UMPC program are mainly associated with the economy-of-scale effects. Finally, the UMPP had geographical and social-economic heterogeneous effects. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to quantify the impact of the UMPC program on recyclable solid waste management and pollution reduction in urban China, with potential contributions to resource and environmental economics.

Achievement of carbon neutrality requires lowering energy consumption in China. However, only a few studies have focused on the impact of urban mining on the reduction in energy consumption, and the impact of urban mining on reducing energy consumption remains unclear. This study explored the impact of urban mining on energy efficiency by adopting the panel data of 281 prefecture-level cities in China between 2003 and 2016 using the difference-in-difference method, and tested the setting up of urban mining pilot bases on reducing urban energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) and channel mechanisms. The empirical findings show that urban mining pilot bases have significantly reduced energy consumption per unit of GDP by 3.67%. The instrumental variable method was used to overcome endogenous problems of the empirical results and related robustness tests. The verification results of the impact mechanism show that urban mining reduces the energy consumption per unit of GDP through three channels: by improving the degree of urban marketization, enhancing the harmony between the government and the market, and increasing the abundance of factor markets. The heterogeneity analysis shows that urban mining has a significant reduction effect on energy consumption per unit of GDP in all four regions of China; however, the energy-saving effect in the northeast is higher than that in the other regions. This study provides an empirical test and policy insights for the contribution of urban mining pilot bases in promoting China’s development of green industry and circular economy. It also offers a new path for cities in developing countries to promote energy conservation and achieve urban sustainability via urban mining.

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Rapid economic development has caused serious air pollution which threatens human health. Science parks play an important role in economic development, however their air pollutants deteriorate the ambient air quality. This study investigates the relationship between the economic performance and air pollution of Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan, which is the biggest production base of semi-conductors and other relevant high-tech industries. The total business turnover and annual average concentrations of sulfur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O3), nitrogen oxide (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO) and particle matter with aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm (PM10) of Hsinchu Science Park from 1993 to 2012 were employed for the analysis. Vector Auto Regression (VAR) model was used to analyze the relationship between economic performance and air pollution for Hsinchu Science Park. The results indicated that there was a close, long-term and stable relationship between economic performance and air pollution concentrations in Hsinchu Science Park. A significant hysteresis effect of the economic performance was observed on the O3 and CO concentrations, while a weak hysteresis effect of that was revealed on the SO2, NOx and PM10 concentrations. The increasing emissions of O3 and CO resulted from the production expansion. By contrast, SO2, NOx, PM10 were not affected by the growth of economic performance of Hsinchu Science Park.