Regional Integration and Green Development of Urban Agglomerations: Quasi-natural Experiment Based on Yangtze River Delta Expansion
LI Ge1, GAO Da2, LYU Shigong3
1. Glorious Sun School of Business and Management,Donghua University,Shanghai 200051,China; 2. School of Literature,Law and Economics,Wuhan University of Science and Technology,Wuhan 430065,China; 3. School of Economics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Abstract Based on the data of 212 prefecture-level cities in China from 1997 to 2018, this paper takes the expansion of urban agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta as a natural experiment of regional integration, and empirically tests the impact of regional integration on green development by difference in difference model (DID).The empirical results are as follows: (1) The expansion of urban agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta has significantly improved the green development level of the overall urban agglomeration, and a series of robustness tests have confirmed the reliability of this conclusion; (2) Mechanism analysis shows that the expansion of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration integrates the previously independent cities into an urban agglomeration economy, and promotes the green development of urban agglomeration by strengthening the economic ties between cities, promoting the upgrading of industrial structure and upgrading the level of technological innovation; (3) In addition, In cities with higher level of economic development, higher level of technological innovation and higher proportion of secondary industry, regional integration plays a greater role in promoting green development.Therefore, in the process of promoting regional integration, China should strengthen inter-regional coordination and cooperation in the field of ecological and environmental governance to jointly achieve green development.
LI Ge,GAO Da,LYU Shigong. Regional Integration and Green Development of Urban Agglomerations: Quasi-natural Experiment Based on Yangtze River Delta Expansion. Economic Survey, 2022, 39(4): 022.
2022, Vol. 39 
