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FDI, technology spillovers and green innovation in China: analysis based on Data Envelopment Analysis

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Abstract

Over the years, foreign direct investment (FDI) has not only promoted rapid economic growth in China, but also affected the country’s environmental quality through technology spillover. This paper tests the variables that may affect the ability of green innovation by using the Granger causality test. It extracts the variables passed the test as input variables, selects the number of patents as output variable, and evaluates the efficiency of various provinces in mainland China by examining their yearly technological progress variables. At the same time, technological progress is defined and divided into capital and environmental factors, and then panel data using the variable coefficients model was used to fit influencing factors to obtain impact coefficients of capital and environment. On this basis, this paper makes the determination of membership to replace the general sense of ‘threshold’ value by using fuzzy theory and proposes the concept of the ‘comprehensive threshold’ of economic development and environmental protection. The results show that less than a quarter of China’s provinces have crossed the comprehensive threshold. Finally, based on the conclusions of quantitative analysis, some suggestions are proposed that the Chinese government ought to enact different strategies for the introduction of FDI according to different development situations of different provinces.

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Notes

  1. Data are derived from “Global and Regional FDI Trends in 2010” issued by UNCTAD on January 17, 2011. The data are not including the financial sector, being US $101.10 billion and lower than the data released by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on January 18, 2011.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the supporting of Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (No. NCET-12-0595), National Natural Science Foundation of China (71171001), Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (10YJC630208), Key Foundation of Natural Science for Colleges and Universities in Anhui, China (KJ2011A001), Soft Science Foundation of Anhui, China (12020503063), and Key Foundation of National research in Statistics of China (2011LZ023).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Statistics and Applied Mathematics, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu, 233030, P.R. China

    Malin Song & Jun Tao

  2. School of Economics, NanKai University, Tianjin, 300071, P.R. China

    Shuhong Wang

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  1. Malin Song
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  2. Jun Tao
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Correspondence to Malin Song.

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Song, M., Tao, J. & Wang, S. FDI, technology spillovers and green innovation in China: analysis based on Data Envelopment Analysis. Ann Oper Res 228, 47–64 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-013-1442-0

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