Band 13, Heft 2

The impact of energy price fluctuation on the macro economy is a hot issue that is continuously concerned by the academic community, but few literature have paid attention to the impact of energy price fluctuation on housing price and the financial risks that may arise. Based on the data of cities at and above the prefecture level in China, this paper empirically examines the impact of energy price fluctuation on the price fluctuation of the domestic real estate, and analyzes its influencing mechanism and transmission pathways. The results show that changes of energy price will significantly affect the fluctuation of domestic real estate price, and it is more obvious in large cities and megacities. Energy price affect the demand for housing through changes of interest rate levels on the one hand, and the supply of the real estate market through the cost of housing construction on the other hand, which leads to housing price fluctuation. After a series of robustness tests, the results are still valid. At the same time, the effect is asymmetric, that is, higher energy price increases the fluctuation of house price, but the impact of falling energy price is not significant. Therefore, when preventing real estate market risks, energy price should be considered as a forward-looking indicator to focus on, and the regulation and control policies of the real estate market should be scientifically formulated. This paper not only provides a new perspective on the mechanism of housing price formation, but also enriches the research on the interconnection between energy and financial markets.

Green trade barriers are often seen as a catalyst that promotes exporting countries to develop green technologies. However, by distinguishing the green technology behavior of enterprises into green technology transformation and green technology innovation, this paper finds that although green trade barriers can encourage enterprises in exporting countries to increase investment in green technology transformation in order to obtain rapid market access, they crowd out the resources of green technology innovation of enterprises. In other words, green trade barriers will strengthen enterprises’ dependence on the introduction of green technologies, weaken their innovation capabilities, and increase the risk of being locked in the middle of the global industrial chain, creating a trap effect. Using the data of enterprises in the heavily polluting industry of A-shares from 2009 to 2021, this paper confirms the existence of the trap effect. In addition, this paper finds that due to the influence of short-sightedness of managers, alleviating corporate financing constraints can enhance the promotion effect of green trade barriers on the green technological transformation of enterprises, but cannot reduce its inhibiting effect on green technology innovation. The study also finds that even if the time window is extended to the medium and long term, green trade barriers cannot have a significant positive impact on enterprises’ green technology innovation. Therefore, the government should not overestimate the role of green trade barriers in encouraging green development and green technology innovation, nor should it rely too much on loose financing policies. In contrast, government should formulate targeted industrial policies to help enterprises overcome green trade barriers through technological innovation.

An in-depth investigation into the effect of embedment in global value chain (GVC) on energy conservation and emissions reduction is of great significance for scientifically assessing the environmental impact of GVC participation, and promoting high-quality development in China. This paper incorporates GVC embedment, energy consumption and carbon emissions into the same analysis framework for the first time. Based on the WIOD database, this paper theoretically and empirically examines the impact and mechanism of global value chain embeddedness on carbon emission reduction from two dimensions: energy consumption intensity and energy consumption structure. The study found that GVC embedment significantly reduced the industry’s carbon emission intensity; developing economies’ embedment in GVC helped reduce their carbon emission intensity, while the effect was not obvious in developed economies. GVC embedment had a significant inhibitory effect on the carbon emissions in both upstream and downstream industries, but not conducive to carbon reduction of low-tech manufacturing. The mechanism test shows that the GVC embedment not only exhibits the dual effects of energy conservation and emissions reduction, but also has a significant impact on carbon emissions by reducing the energy consumption intensity and improving the energy consumption structure.

Digital service trade has emerged as a pivotal engine for global economic transformation and development. However, the implementation of differentiated regulatory measures for trade in digital services among economies has led to increasingly frequent trade disputes. This paper constructs a regulatory homogeneity network for digital service trade in 60 major economies, and systematically evaluates the structural characteristics of the network and the regulatory homogeneity among economies from 2014 to 2021. Furthermore, this paper empirically examines the impact of the partnership characteristics of regulatory homogenization in the network of major economies on their exports. The analysis of the network structure shows that major economies are more inclined to optimize and simplify existing trade partnerships, and are moving towards more diversified restrictive measures in the regulatory model of digital services trade, which has led to the rise of trade protectionism. The empirical text results show that expanding and deepening the regulatory homogeneous partnership of trade in digital services promotes the export of digital services in major economies. This promotion effect is mainly achieved by reducing the cost of digital service trade and enhancing business trust. In addition, the export promotion effect of developing regulatory homogenization partnerships is better than that of increasing the openness of digital service trade, and the homogenization of policies between openness and protection is more important. This paper provides important implications for coordinating the openness and security of digital services trade: China should actively cooperate with multilateral and bilateral digital service trade partners to jointly build a homogeneous environment for regulatory regulations. In particular, it is necessary to deepen the regulatory homogeneity partnership with Asian and developing economies to expand the influence of the “China model” in the global regulation of digital services trade.

Based on the export VAT rebate rate data from 2004 to 2015, this paper measures the uncertainty of Chinese export VAT rebate policy by using unexpected fluctuation of export VAT rebate rate, and finds that the index varies across products, years and industries. Then, the paper studies the influence of the uncertainty of export VAT rebate policy on China’s export growth from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. The research results show that this uncertainty reduces the expected profit of export enterprises and their optimal output, and significantly reduces the growth rate of the ordinary export that applies the export VAT rebate method, but it has no impact on the processing export. By decomposing total value of exports, it is found that the growth in the number of ordinary export relationship and average sales decrease with the increase of uncertainty, while the average price growth rate increases slightly, and these effects are only reflected in the newly entered export relations. The findings suggest that when the uncertainty of export VAT rebate policy is high, enterprises are more cautious about entering the ordinary export market and more likely to adopt a low-quantity-high-price strategy.

Uncertainties are becoming more and more diverse around the world, and risks and impacts affecting the healthy development of cities are increasing. Fostering urban social resilience is not only a proactive countermeasure to growing external pressures and potential impacts, but also an important starting point for growth. This article analyzes the impact mechanisms of three important types of urban social networks - degree centrality (DC), closeness centrality (CC), and betweenness centrality (BC) - between residents, and organizations on the economic resilience of cities from the perspective of social networks. It summarizes the challenges faced in enhancing economic resilience under the social network perspective, including unbalanced resource allocation, sparse social contact networks, weak social bottom lines, lack of social trust, and insufficient innovation capabilities. On this basis, this article makes suggestions such as strengthening the construction of social networks, promoting urban economic restructuring to enhance the adaptability and innovation capabilities of cities, fostering diverse urban social networks, optimizing information dissemination mechanisms, strengthening the construction of urban social credit systems, and improving the social security system in order to fostering the resilience of through the perspective of social networks.