Can China's underdeveloped regions catch up with green economy? A convergence analysis from the perspective of environmental total factor productivity

As the weak effect of previous economy catch-up policies in the context of growth traps in underdeveloped regions, this paper contributes to the knowledge area of establishing a coordinated economyenvironment developing mode that aims at green economy catch-up from the perspective of long-term convergence of environmental total factor productivity (ETFP). To verify the feasibility of this convergence as a practical path for green economy catch-up, we investigate the existence of conditional beta-convergence and the effect of its convergence conditions through comparing Eastern, Central, Western, and Northeastern China with the aid of convergence model. Empirical results indicate that club convergence of ETFP has not appeared in these four regions, thus supporting the existence of conditional convergence. Further analysis shows when ETFP increases by 1%, the foreign trade dependence, pollution intensity, and input biases on ETFP as convergence conditions in China will decrease by 29.5%, 40.32% and 91.74%, respectively. However, it exists heterogeneous embodiments of convergence conditions among four regions. What's more, unskilled human capital, energy structure, and foreign trade dependence all significantly act on ETFP growth with marginal effect as 0.0012, 0.0039, and -0.012 in China's underdeveloped regions (Western and Northeastern provinces), respectively. Overall, our findings reveal that the input of human capital, greenization criterion, and international openness should be viewed as important factors for green economy catch-up in China's underdeveloped regions. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.