• Energy Research
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The widespread application of new-generation information technology, such as big data and artificial intelligence, has promoted the development of economic and technological transformation and the deep integration of digital and real economies. The digital economy is an essential force of China in the new era and it is promoting China’s economic development in a high-quality way. In this study, we theoretically describe the mechanism of the digital economy that affects total-factor energy efficiency and empirically analyze the impact of digital economy development on total-factor energy efficiency using data from 275 cities at the prefecture level and above in China from 2011 to 2019. We found that the digital economy has significantly improved total-factor energy efficiency. We used instrumental variable estimation and the replacement of explanatory variables to test the robustness of our results, finding that our conclusions were valid. Technological innovation, industrial structure optimization, and resource misallocation improvement are the channels through which the digital economy affects total-factor energy efficiency. Resource misallocation at the city level as the intermediary variable was this paper’s research gap. Further research showed that the improvement effect of the total-factor energy efficiency in eastern regions and megacities was more evident under the influence of the digital economy. All regions in China should combine their resource endowments to further release the dividends of the digital economy, enabling it to best promote total-factor energy efficiency. The relevant departments of the government should also stimulate market demand and promote the deep integration and balanced development of the digital economy and energy industry in low-energy-efficiency cities.

Socio-economic security is a highly critical issue that is addressed by every country in the world. In order to counteract challenges and threats faced by Russia, the Economic Security Strategy of the Russian Federation has been formulated. The development of human capital was proclaimed as one of the key areas to be targeted by the state policy. In this regard, the primary task is to identify destabilizing factors of socio-economic security in the development of human capital, which determined the relevance of the article. The article analyzes the research approaches to defining the key features of socio-economic security and human capital. It highlights the main principles of the theory of human capital on the basis of which a systematic approach to the study of human capital is justified. The proposed approach aims to identify negative factors that weaken regional security. By adopting this approach to the data in hand, the socio-economic security of the Voronezh Region, the old-developed region of the Central Black Earth Region in Russia, has been assessed. The data used for the analysis were collected from the Federal State Statistics Service. The mapping of the results of socio-economic differentiation was carried out by methods of GIS-technology, in particular Quantum GIS 12. For the processing of the initial information, the of multivariate statistical and econometric analysis SPSS Statistic 20.0 was used. As a result, factors that will have a negative impact on the development of human capital in the foreseeable future have been identified, namely the deterioration of the demographic situation, in particular the aging of the population and its natural decline; the decline in the quality of education, imbalances in the labor market, declining living standards, and deteriorating public health. It is concluded that to overcome the critical situation in the sphere of human capital and to ensure socio-economic security, it is necessary to carry out preventive measures.

Coastal regions worldwide have been focal points for migration as well as affected by environmental changes for a long time. In the debate on climate change and migration coastal regions are among the “hot spot” areas that are supposed to be prone to “climate migration” in the near future. The paper analyses the situation in two different regional settings and advocates for a sound regional perspective on the relationship of environmental change and migration. Based on the conceptual framework of migrant trajectories, the paper shows how popu­lations in Keta (Ghana) and Semarang (Indonesia), affected by similar environmental changes such as flooding and erosion, react quite differently in terms of migration and mobility. The regional perspective as well as each region’s past experiences with migration and environmental changes shows to be crucial in order to understand current reactions to environmental degradation. The Keta setting represents a typology that pronounces migration trajectories as part of long-standing interregional and international migration, the Semarang setting, however, may be classified as a rather typical modernization-induced migration scheme, linked to rapidly growing urbanisation, with “trapped populations” on the one hand and in-migration of migrant workers on the other hand.

Because of their low flexibility, traditional vibration sensors cannot perform arbitrary bending adjustments when facing curved surfaces and other complex working conditions during the drilling process; therefore, this research proposes a ring-shaped vibration sensor (RSV−TENG) that can deform freely in the bending direction, and which can be used in working conditions where the inner bending angle of the drill pipe changes greatly. Test results show that the vibration frequency measurement range is from 4 Hz to 16 Hz, with a measurement error less than 4%, the vibration amplitude measurement range is less than 20 mm, with a measurement error less than 5%, the output voltage and current signal are 120 V and 60 nA, respectively, when three RSV−TENGs are connected in parallel, and the maximum output power is 6 × 10−7 W when the external resistance is 106 Ω. Compared with traditional downhole sensors, this sensor has self-powered and self-sensing functions, eliminating the shortcomings of battery and cable power supply; in addition, this sensor can be installed in the drill pipe space with different curvature radii, so it is more suited to complex and changeable downhole working conditions.

Agriculture is one of the sectors that is expected to be most significantly impacted by climate change. There has been considerable interest in assessing these impacts and many recent studies investigating agricultural impacts for individual countries and regions using an array of models. However, the great majority of existing studies explore impacts on a country or region of interest without explicitly accounting for impacts on the rest of the world. This approach can bias the results of impact assessments for agriculture given the importance of global trade in this sector. Due to potential impacts on relative competitiveness, international trade, global supply, and prices, the net impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector in each region depend not only on productivity impacts within that region, but on how climate change impacts agricultural productivity throughout the world. In this study, we apply a global model of agriculture and forestry to evaluate climate change impacts on US agriculture with and without accounting for climate change impacts in the rest of the world. In addition, we examine scenarios where trade is expanded to explore the implications for regional allocation of production, trade volumes, and prices. To our knowledge, this is one of the only attempts to explicitly quantify the relative importance of accounting for global climate change when conducting regional assessments of climate change impacts. The results of our analyses reveal substantial differences in estimated impacts on the US agricultural sector when accounting for global impacts vs. US-only impacts, particularly for commodities where the United States has a smaller share of global production. In addition, we find that freer trade can play an important role in helping to buffer regional productivity shocks.

Reduced river runoff and expected upstream infrastructural developments are both potential threats to irrigation water availability for the downstream countries in Central Asia. Although it has been recurrently mentioned that a reduction in water supply will hamper irrigation in the downstream countries, the magnitude of associated economic losses, economy-wide repercussions on employment rates, and degradation of irrigated lands has not been quantified as yet. A computable general equilibrium model is used to assess the economy-wide consequences of a reduced water supply in Uzbekistan—a country that encompasses more than half of the entire irrigated croplands in Central Asia. Modeling findings showed that a 10–20 % reduction in water supply, as expected in the near future, may reduce the areas to be irrigated by 241,000–374,000 hectares and may cause unemployment to a population of 712–868,000, resulting in a loss for the national income of 3.6–4.3 %. A series of technical, financial, and institutional measures, implementable at all levels starting from the farm to the basin scale, are discussed for reducing the expected water risks. The prospects of improving the basin-wide water management governance, increasing water and energy use efficiency, and establishing the necessary legal and institutional frameworks for enhancing the introduction of needed technological and socioeconomic change are argued as options for gaining more regional water security and equity.

The paper aims to present the role of cities and their surroundings (metropolis) in the creation and flow of value, in order to shift the focus of analysis towards the geography of value chains. The analysis combines notions of a network of cities with value-added chains, usually examined separately, to identify the synergies between them and progress in the methodology of the combination. The aim of the paper is to identify the role of the metropolis in connecting the national and regional economy with the world economy within value chains. We present the metropolis not only as a node in global value chains, but also as an intermediary between global, national, and regional economies. We show that the Warsaw metropolis is strongly linked with itself and the rest of the national economy. In the case of the Mazovia region, the strongest links are with the national economy followed by backward links with the metropolis.

The effective enhancement of green total factor productivity (GTFP) through macro-regulatory tools—environmental decentralization and environmental regulation and thus the promotion of high-quality and sustainable economic development—is a hot topic of current research. However, many studies have focused on how environmental decentralization or environmental regulation affects green total factor productivity, lacking attention to the relationships and impact paths among the three. To clarify the mechanisms of action of the three effects, this paper measures the GTFP of 30 Chinese provinces and cities from 2010 to 2020 through the Super-SBM model. The mediating effect of environmental regulation between environmental decentralization and GTFP is examined. Firstly, the study findings suggested that environmental decentralization is significantly negatively related to GTFP, while different environmental regulations are all significantly positively related to GTFP. Secondly, environmental decentralization suppresses GTFP in eastern China, which has a non-significant effect in central China. It has a catalytic effect on GTFP in western China. Finally, environmental decentralization can enhance GTFP by promoting public participation in environmental regulation. The findings of this paper have implications for adjusting environmental decentralization, environmental regulation policies, and formulating green economic transition and development strategies.