Silk Road Economic Belt strategy and industrial total-factor productivity

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.

Sustainable and Special Economic Zone Selection under Fuzzy Environment: A Case of Pakistan

“…Similarly, there are symmetric results for waste management, as mentioned in the report of the Asian Development Bank [12]. Ignoring environmental issues could hinder the sustainable development in the future and is an undesirable output that must be considered during policy-making [54]. The well run SEZs have better environmental practices and controls [10].…”

“…Proximity to raw material (LI1) is essential for cheaper transportation and acquisition costs [1,36,52,53]. Railways (LI2) can bring heavy cargo and connect with trade corridors [51,54,55]. Proximity to market (LI3) helps in developing the domestic market [5,30,56].…”

“…Air transport (LI5) makes the delivery of delicate and perishable items and international exports in quick time [5,6,32]. Availability of Dry port (LI6) for inland customs and clearing [2,23] and Sea Port (LI7) for importing and exporting cargo and raw material in bulk [54] makes SEZ more competitive.…”

“…Market orientation (MA) determines the objectivity of the SEZ. For market orientation (MA), three sub-criteria i.e., export (MA1) [1,9,26,54] domestic market [13,24,36,50] were chosen. Zone 3.0 ensures that SEZ is sustainable in resource utilization.…”

Estimating Capacity Utilization of Chinese State Farms

“…However, to the best of our knowledge, no previous studies analyzed the CU and efficiency of China's state farms, which would allow consideration of the effects of the input availability. The measures of efficiency and productivity change have been applied for analysis of different economic systems [5][6][7]. This paper estimates the efficiency and CU of state farms at the aggregate level.…”