The role of innovation investment and institutional quality on green total factor productivity: evidence from 46 countries along the “Belt and Road”

Based on the panel data of 46 countries in “Belt and Road” (B&R) from 2004 to 2016, this paper studies the impact of innovation investment and institutional quality on green total factor productivity (GTFP). Firstly, the ICRG database, World Bank WDI database, Traditional Foundation database, and Wind database are matched to obtain the balanced panel data of 46 countries along the B&R from 2004 to 2016. Secondly, the Malmquist-Luenberger index, which can be included in the unexpected output, is used to calculate the GTFP of countries along B&R. Thirdly, the evaluation system of national institutional quality of B&R is constructed from three dimensions (political institutional quality, economic institutional quality, and legal institutional quality), and the overall system quality of different countries is measured by entropy method. Finally, an empirical study is made on the relationship among innovation investment, institutional quality, and green total factor productivity. The results show that innovation investment has significantly promoted the GTFP of the B&R countries. It is worth noting that there is a non-linear relationship between innovation investment and GTFP in the B&R countries. With the improvement of overall system quality, political system quality, economic system quality, and legal system quality, the promotion effect of innovation investment on GTFP is further enhanced. In addition, the heterogeneity regression results show that the impact of innovation investment on GTFP is significantly heterogeneous in different regions of the B&R countries. Specifically, innovation investment has the greatest impact on GTFP in South Asia, followed by East Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East, and North Africa.