Resource Endowment, Industrial Structure, and Green Development of the Yellow River Basin

Abstract

The Yellow River Basin is an important energy base of China, and its green development is crucial to Chinese economic transformation. In this paper, we calculate the green total factor productivity (GTFP) to measure the green development level of the Yellow River Basin by using an Slack Based Model- Global Malmquist-Luenberger (SBM-GML) index model. On this basis, we use a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) model to further analyze the impact of resource endowment and industrial structure on the green development of cities. The results show that resource endowment inhibits the green development of cities and that the resource curse is observed in the Yellow River Basin. The industrial structure advancement significantly promotes the green development of cities. The impact of industrial structure rationalization on green development varies significantly on the type of city. Specifically, it has an inhibiting effect on key environmental protection cities but a promoting effect on non-key environmental protection cities.