Suchergebnisse

Based on provincial panel data of China from 2011 to 2019, this paper discusses the influence and mechanism of the platform economy on the high-quality development of regional economies. It is found that the platform economy has an inverted U-shaped impact on the high-quality development of regional economies. On the left side of the inverted U-shaped inflection point, the platform economy plays a significant role in promoting high-quality economic development; on the right side of the inflection point, the platform economy has an obvious inhibitory effect on high-quality economic development. Statistical analysis showed that 85% of the observations fell on the left side of the inflection point, indicating that China's platform economy as a whole is in the early stages of development. From the strong and weak grouping test of the degree of government intervention, it was found that the platform economy only has an inverted U-shaped effect on the high-quality development of the areas with weak intervention. From the point of view of the coefficient, the platform economy has a greater promoting effect on the high-quality development of the areas with strong intervention. From the grouping test of the quality of the market system, it was found that the inverted U-shaped curve is steeper in the areas with higher institutional quality, indicating that, in the early stage of development, the platform economy has a greater promoting effect on the high-quality development of areas with perfect institutions. In addition, the analysis of regional heterogeneity showed that, in the early stage of development, the promoting effect of the platform economy on the high-quality development of the northeastern and western regions is more significant. After exceeding the threshold, the platform economy has an inhibitory effect on the high-quality development of all regions. The mechanism test shows that technology, talent, and capital in the initial stage of development can all play a positive regulatory role; after exceeding the threshold, platform economic monopoly may restrain high-quality economic development by hindering technological progress and causing a mismatch of labor–capital elements and resources.

The real-time monitoring of reductions of economic activity by containment measures and its effect on the transmission of the coronavirus (COVID-19) is a critical unanswered question. We inferred 5,642 weekly activity anomalies from the meteorology-adjusted differences in spaceborne tropospheric NO(2) column concentrations after the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak relative to the baseline from 2016 to 2019. Two satellite observations reveal reincreasing economic activity associated with lifting control measures that comes together with accelerating COVID-19 cases before the winter of 2020/2021. Application of the near-real-time satellite NO(2) observations produces a much better prediction of the deceleration of COVID-19 cases than applying the Oxford Government Response Tracker, the Public Health and Social Measures, or human mobility data as alternative predictors. A convergent cross-mapping suggests that economic activity reduction inferred from NO(2) is a driver of case deceleration in most of the territories. This effect, however, is not linear, while further activity reductions were associated with weaker deceleration. Over the winter of 2020/2021, nearly 1 million daily COVID-19 cases could have been avoided by optimizing the timing and strength of activity reduction relative to a scenario based on the real distribution. Our study shows how satellite observations can provide surrogate data for activity reduction during the COVID-19 pandemic and monitor the effectiveness of containment to the pandemic before vaccines become widely available.