Differentiated effects of diversified technological sources on energy-saving technological progress: Empirical evidence from China's industrial sectors

Although it has been a consensus that the promotion of energy-saving technology plays a vital role in impelling the green transformation of economic development, the existing studies pay little attention to whether diversified technological sources present differentiated effects on energy-saving technological progress. Using the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) based on the translog production function, this paper estimates and compares the energy-saving technological progress rates of various industrial sub-sectors in China over 2001-2011. Furthermore, using the system generalized method of moments (SGMM), which is able to effectively control the endogeneity problem, we investigate the differentiated effects of six basic technological sources on energy-saving technological progress. The results show that although there are evident differences of energy-saving technological progress rates among different industrial sub-sectors, China's industrial energy-saving technological progress presents an overall improved trend. Among six primary technological sources, only the forward technological spillover effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the forced effect of competition have a significant positive impact on energy-saving technological progress, while the influences of backward and horizontal technology spillovers, original innovation, and leaning by exporting are all not significant. Moreover, industrial energy-saving technological progress shows an obvious path dependence property, i.e., the previous high-level energy-saving technological progress has an evident positive impact on the current one. Accordingly, we propose that the Chinese government should encourage domestic industrial enterprises to learn and absorb advanced energy-saving technologies from foreign investment enterprises and by exporting products with more advanced technology content and added value.