AUTHOR=Hao Xiaoli , Wang Xinhui , Xue Yan 

TITLE=The International Spillover Effect of Import Trade on Energy Efficiency in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Evidence From China

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Energy Research

VOLUME=Volume 9 - 2021

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/energy-research/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2021.808949

DOI=10.3389/fenrg.2021.808949

ISSN=2296-598X

ABSTRACT=China is in a transition period—its government has been expanding imports and pushing China to shift from a world factory to a world market. One of its aims is to promote energy reform and ensure energy security through expanding imports. Taking the resource-based regions of China as objects, based on 2003-2017 panel data，this paper investigates energy efficiency loss by Stochastic Frontier Approach and the effects of different technical inefficiency items. Surprisingly, quantitative results show that 99.9% energy efficiency loss in resource-based regions is caused by technical inefficiency (which had never been found and discussed in previous studies). However, this does not mean that China's efforts to expand imports as a way to improve energy efficiency and ensure energy security are undesirable. Instead, interestingly, it is import rather than industrial structure that can significantly reduce energy efficiency loss. Then, employ the counter-fact test to quantify the positive accelerating effect of human capital (average as high as 4.1%) on efficiency improvement caused by import as the key factor of absorptive capacity in the technology spillover. At last, it puts forward the corresponding policy suggestions in energy fields, to solve the problem effectively, especially “comprehensive technology spreading center” and “innovative three-dimensional talent supplementary and flow mechanism”.