Abstract Based on the super-efficient SBM model and GML index including unexpected output, this paper calculates the growth rate and decomposition index of green total factor productivity (GTFP) of 285 cities from 2004 to 2018, and uses Tobit-DID model and panel threshold model to evaluate the influence and mechanism of the establishment of national development zones on the growth of urban GTFP. The results show that the establishment of the development zones can significantly improve the total factor productivity (TFP) growth level of the city, but it has a significant negative relationship with the GTFP growth rate of the city after considering resource consumption and pollution emissions. After passing a series of robustness tests, the result still holds. The increase in the number and scale of polluting enterprises in the development zones intensifies the pollution discharge of the city and is the main factor restricting the growth and promotion of the city GTFP. Affected by the duration and approved area, the growth of enterprise scale in the development zones has a threshold effect on urban environmental pollution. The longer the duration is and the larger the approved area is, the greater the impact coefficient of enterprise scale growth on urban environmental pollution is. Therefore, we should appropriately raise the threshold for the environment of the development zones to enter the park, establish the elimination mechanism of polluting enterprises, and speed up the green transformation of the development zones so as to promote the growth of urban green economy.
WANG Haixing,ZHOU Yaodong. Whether Development Zones Can Affect the Green Economic Growth of Cities: A Quasi-natural Experiment Based on 285 Cities. Economic Survey, 2023, 40(3): 024.
2023, Vol. 40 
