Yulian Peng’s research while affiliated with Jinan University and other places

This paper constructs data from 30 provinces in mainland China from 1997 to 2016 and mainly adopts panel data fixed effects models to investigate how the promotion pressure on local officials affects regional carbon emissions. Our empirical results show that the relationship between the promotion pressure on local officials and regional carbon emissions has a dynamic evolution characteristic during our research period. Specifically, the promotion pressure on local officials is positively associated with regional carbon emissions before 2009; however, this relationship weakened after China’s carbon emission regulatory policies were strengthened in 2010. Furthermore, our heterogeneity analysis results show that the effect of promotion pressure on regional carbon emissions is moderated by the regional industrial structure, the economic development level, regional innovation capability, the tenure of officials and the age of officials. The conclusions of this study are helpful for understanding the driving factors of regional carbon emissions from the political economy perspective, and they also have implications for the formulation of performance evaluation and carbon emission reduction policies.

The expanding of market-oriented reforms (MORs) over the past 40 years has provided steady momentum for China’s rapid economic growth. Based on the balanced panel data of 28 Chinese provinces from 1985–2015, an empirical analysis using stochastic frontier analysis was conducted to examine the impacts of MORs on the evolution of China’s green economic development. Energy efficiency is used to evaluate the degree of China’s green economic development. Results demonstrated that the average level of provincial energy efficiency was relatively low and the deviation of real energy efficiency from the optimal efficiency frontier was approximately 58%. This indicated China’s energy resources were extensively utilized. Provincial energy efficiency evolved dynamically in line with the degree of marketization. The MORs were the driving force of the improvements in China’s energy efficiency, and provided strong institutional support for China’s future green economy development.

This paper studies the stickiness of CEO compensation by verifying the existence of asymmetric relations between CEO compensation change and corporate performance in Chinese listed companies during 2006 to 2009, the results show that the marginal increase of CEO compensation in the case of corporate earnings is to be significantly greater than the marginal reduction in the case of corporate deficit, which is tantamount to say that the stickiness of CEO compensation exists. Further research finds that the stickiness of CEO compensation in Chinese listed companies has not yet demonstrated significant time-varying trends; but there is sign of increasement. We also find that the stickiness of CEO compensation can be suppressed by improving regional marketization, shareholding system reform and diversified equity of state-owned companies, supervision of government, media and general public, and matrix control strategy.