The pattern recognition of China's new energy product export growth to the Belt and Road countries and the determination of its efficiency factors

Recognizing the power model and efficiency factors of new energy export growth is extremely important for the sustainable development of a country's new energy industry. However, limited attention has been paid to China's new energy product exports, especially in terms of its pattern and efficiency at a regional level. In this study, we first used the H-K ternary margin to estimate the extensive margin, price margin, and quantity margin of China's new energy product export growth to 48 countries along the Belt and Road from 2001 to 2018. Then, we proposed a feasible input-output mechanism of export growth and adopted the three-stage DEA to measure the efficiency of China's new energy product export growth. Finally, we examined the impact of economic institutional distance and political institutional distance on measured technical efficiency. The empirical results show that insufficient motivation and low efficiency are the main problems that China's new energy product export growth faced. The power model and efficiency level of China's new energy product export growth show significant heterogeneity among countries. Institutional distance is an important factor affecting the efficiency of China's new energy product export growth. Our computational results provide implications for the sustainable development of new energy across Chinese regions. (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The study highlights the insufficient motivation and low efficiency faced by China's new energy product export growth, with significant heterogeneity in power models and efficiency levels among countries, and institutional distance playing a crucial role in affecting efficiency.