Green total factor productivity in Chinese cities: Measurement and causal analysis within a new structural economics framework

The driving force of high-quality development is to improve the total factor productivity. This paper examines this issue at the city level in China. First, input–output data are reconstructed, and then the green total factor productivity (GTFP) index of 264 Chinese cities during 2003–2018 is accounted based on the SBM-DDF-ML index under data envelopment analysis (DEA). The accounting results show distinctively temporal, regional, and city-scale heterogeneity in urban GTFP growth. Second, the analysis of the causal factors of urban GTFP growth in the framework of the new structural economics verifies the theoretical inference that structural factors not only lead to disparities in macroeconomic growth, but are also a key reason underlying heterogeneities in urban GTFP. Specifically, industrial comparative advantage based on resource endowments mainly works by optimizing the efficiency of resource allocation to enhance pure efficiency change, and its dynamics will also generate demand for technological progress to promote pure technological progress. Moreover, a mismatch between industrial structure and resource endowment structure is not conducive to improvements in urban productivity improvement, but the contemporaneous introduction of more advanced technologies can help reduce or even reverse this negative effect.