Assessing the effects of extreme climate risk on urban ecological resilience in China.

The frequent occurrence of extreme weather events has imparted significant pressure on urban ecosystem management. Evaluating the relationship between extreme climate risk (ECR) and urban ecological resilience (UER) is a key issue in achieving the green and sustainable development objectives of cities. This study measures UER in China from 2005 to 2020 using the entropy weight method-TOPSIS method, investigates the relationship between ECR and UER using the dynamic GMM model, and further explores the influencing mechanism. The results suggest that ECR has an inhibiting influence on UER. Additionally, the moderating mechanism investigation demonstrates that environmental regulation can mitigate the threat of ECR to UER to a certain extent, and with the regulation effect based on the government's environmental concern being better than that of the market pollution fee payment. The group test outcomes demonstrate that the discrepancies in regions and marketization lead to certain differences in the relationship between ECR and UER. Additional investigation indicates that ECR has an asymmetric relationship with UER at distinct quantiles. Our findings reflect the subtle associations between ECR and UER as a whole, and will help relevant organizations in formulating more precise and scientific policies to enhance urban ecological resilience.

Facilitate or Inhibit: Corporate Environmental Performance and Financing Costs.

The proposed carbon peak and carbon neutralization goals have ushered China into an era of emissions reduction and a climate-oriented economy. With the proposed double carbon goal, China has formulated many environmental protection and green credit policies. This paper aims to assess the impact of corporate environmental performance (CEP) on financing costs, using a panel dataset of companies in China's heavily polluting industries from 2010 to 2019. We employed fixed-effect models, moderating-effect models, and panel quantile regression (PQR) to analyze the impact, underlying mechanisms, and asymmetric features of CEP on financing costs. Our results indicate that CEP has an inhibitory effect on financing costs, with political connections strengthening this effect and GEA weakening it. Moreover, the impact exhibits asymmetry at different levels of financing costs, wherein lower financing costs see a greater weakening effect from CEP. Improved CEP helps to optimize the financing performance of companies and reduce financing costs. Therefore, policy makers and regulatory authorities should work to unblock financing channels for companies, encourage environmental investment, and remain flexible in implementing environmental policies.

Pollution prevention strategies of SMEs in a green supply chain finance under external government intervention.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are an important force in the promotion of economic development. However, SMEs in the supply chain are often severely punished by the government for polluting the environment through their production processes. Therefore, it is crucial to solve the environmental pollution problem of SMEs. To compensate for the "common knowledge" assumption of participants in traditional game theory, this study constructs an evolutionary game model of a green supply chain composed of SMEs, core enterprises, and commercial banks. The strategic decisions of the supply chain members are analyzed in relation to external interventions of the government. Subsequently, the impact of government incentives and penalties on these strategic choices is considered. The results show that government incentives can promote SMEs' choice to use pollution control strategies, and government penalties can reduce the risk of an SME defaulting, thus promoting the healthy development of a green supply chain finance system. Furthermore, increasing the new income of SMEs, raising the guarantee rate of core enterprises, and reducing the cost of green loans reviewed by banks and the guarantee cost of core enterprises can effectively promote the equilibrium of the tripartite evolutionary game. These findings indicate that the game model introduced here can effectively solve the environmental pollution problems of SMEs and promote the healthy development of a green supply chain finance system.

Measuring environmental efficiency of thermal power plants in China: an improved Malmquist-Luenberger index with materials balance principle.

Improving environmental efficiency of thermal power plants is a crucial way to realize green and sustainable development. This paper investigates environmental efficiency of thermal power plants in China in 2011, 2013, and 2015 by conceptualizing a modified super-efficiency slacks-based measure with materials balance principle (MBP), which also eliminates the infeasibility in Malmquist-Luenberger index (MLI). An improved MLI is proposed based on the new efficiency measure. The results show that (1) the thermal power plants in most provinces have high environmental efficiency and productivity. (2) The improvement of productivity mainly originates from technical progress. This study provides a new perspective for environmental efficiency measurement on thermal power plants and advances related studies by (1) considering the first law of thermodynamics and introducing MBP in measuring environmental efficiency of thermal power plants and (2) defining a new MLI that captures the efficiency change and technical change in a super-efficiency framework. The thermal power plants in China can improve their environmental performance based on the results of current study.

Stackelberg game of buyback policy in supply chain with a risk-averse retailer and a risk-averse supplier based on CVaR.

This paper considers a decentralized supply chain in which a single supplier sells a perishable product to a single retailer facing uncertain demand. We assume that the supplier and the retailer are both risk averse and utilize Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR), a risk measure method which is popularized in financial risk management, to estimate their risk attitude. We establish a buyback policy model based on Stackelberg game theory under considering supply chain members' risk preference and get the expressions of the supplier's optimal repurchase price and the retailer's optimal order quantity which are compared with those under risk neutral case. Finally, a numerical example is applied to simulate that model and prove related conclusions.