Does financial agglomeration enhance regional green economy development? Evidence from China

In the existing literatures concerning on relationship between financial agglomeration and regional economic growth, the contradiction between economic growth and environmental protection is often neglected. This paper employs the non-radial direction distance function, under the framework of super-efficiency DEA, to take the undesired output like waste water and exhaust gas in the process of regional economic growth into the measurement indicators of regional economic development. This paper further focuses on the relationship between financial agglomeration and regional green economic growth. Three main conclusions are drawn. First, there are inverted U-shaped relationships between financial agglomeration and regional green economy development. Compared with the undesirable output, the impact interval of financial agglomeration on economic growth has changed. Second, the heterogeneous impact of financial agglomeration on the regional green economy development is not only reflected in the significance of the impact, but also in the direction of the impact. Third, the impact of financial agglomeration on regional green economy has a non-linear threshold characteristic.