How does tourism affect the urban heat island effect? A case study of the tourism heat footprint in Macao.

This paper uses the tourism heat footprint (THF) and a structural vector autoregressive model to investigate how tourism has affected the urban heat island effect in Macao, a typical urban tourism destination. The dynamic relationships between the THF, heat island intensity (HII), and quarterly average temperature (QAT) are investigated. The impulse response function and variance decomposition analysis are used to assess if a long-term causal relationship exists between the three indicators. The results show the following. (1) The hotel industry in Macao is the source of energy consumption and heat release. (2) A Granger causality relationship exists between the THF and QAT but not between the THF and HII. (3) The interaction effect between the growth rate of the THF and QAT is manifested as shocks with the same frequency and regular periodic fluctuations. (4) The heat island effect of this tourism destination is reflected in an increase in local temperature due to the energy consumption and heat release by tourists. Based on the results, policy implications for a sustainable tourism city are provided.

A study on the response of carbon emission rights price to energy price macroeconomy and weather conditions.

China's carbon emission trading market has gradually attracted worldwide attention. In this paper, a structural VAR model and Shenzhen, a typical city in China, are selected to study the dynamic relationships between China's carbon emission rights price, energy prices, macroeconomic level, and weather conditions. Shanghai crude oil futures, the first crude oil futures contract in China, is used to describe changes in oil market as a substitute for Daqing crude oil price. The results show that the price of carbon emission rights is mainly affected by its own historical price; and the price of carbon emission rights is positively correlated with crude oil price and natural gas price, but negatively correlated with coal price; the change of macroeconomic level will still have a relatively large impact on carbon emission rights price in the current stage of economic development in China, but this impact is not significant; The impact of weather conditions on the price of carbon emission rights is not obvious. It is found that the launch of the national unified carbon market has indeed achieved certain results, but the situation that China's carbon market is still in its infancy has not been changed; further efforts are needed.

The impact of natural disasters on China's macroeconomy.

This study attempts to construct an econometric model using China's natural disaster losses and macro-industry development data from 1980 to 2017 to explore the macroeconomic fluctuations caused by natural disasters. The structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) and the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) models are employed in estimating the impact of natural disasters on China's macroeconomy and how the disasters specifically affect the three sectors of the economy: primary, secondary, and tertiary. This study concludes that even though natural disasters in China do not significantly affect the overall real GDP, they have adverse impacts on the production in the primary industry, causing a sudden reduction in the means of production in the market and directly affecting various industries, but the impact on the secondary and tertiary industries is weak. This study also shows that the effect of natural disasters on the primary sector reduced significantly following industry restructuring after China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The impact of natural disasters on the primary industry could be reduced by adjusting the industrial structure to deal with macroeconomic shocks caused by natural disasters in order to promote macroeconomic stability of both regional and national economies. Finally, national aid policy should focus on the primary industry since that sector is significantly affected by natural disasters shocks.

How does the water-energy-food nexus work in developing countries? An empirical study of China.

As three resources that are necessary for human survival and production, water, energy and food are increasingly closely linked. In recent years, the water-energy-food nexus has attracted special attention from international organizations and academic circles. However, due to the lack of research on its internal mechanisms, there is still controversy on whether the water-energy-food nexus can be used as a new policy basis. The internal mechanisms of the water-energy-food nexus were analysed from the perspective of industrial linkages in this paper and empirically verified by constructing an SVAR (structuralvectorautoregression) model using China's data. The results showed that there were two forms of conduction in China's water-energy-food nexus: the water-energy-food nexus with nuclear power participation and that with natural gas participation. The characteristics of China's water-energy-food nexus were derived. For the interactions of the water-energy segment in China's water-energy-food nexus, the conduction from energy to water was consistent for different types of energy, while that from water to energy varied depending on the type of energy. Food production always had a negative impact on energy production, while the conduction from energy to food varied for different types of energy. The conduction between food and the water supply was not as significant as was generally considered. Especially, the impact of the water supply on food production was weak. The order of strength intensity and the duration were also available for reference. Accordingly, a new policy basis was presented under the framework of China's water-energy-food nexus. Both our research design and research findings are significant in contributing to understanding the internal mechanisms of the water-energy-food nexus, and the policy implications are also helpful for achieving better policy effects.