LAUSR

Abstract In recent years, the constant advancement of market reform in China improves the market allocation efficiency of production factors and further promotes the rapid growth of economic aggregate output in the country. Additionally, the CO2 emitted in China also constantly increases. Based on panel data pertaining to 30 provinces from 1998 to 2015 in China, the CO2 emission efficiency and marketisation level of China were separately measured using a super Slacks-based measure approach and generalised principal component analysis. On this basis, by utilising a dynamic panel regression model and a panel smooth transition regression model, the influence of market reform on CO2 emission efficiency was explored. The results show that the marketisation level exerts a significantly positive effect on CO2 emission efficiency in both models and the results are robust. On the condition of taking energy price as a threshold variable, the influence of process of marketisation is significantly greater than that when taking technological progress as a threshold variable. It implied that although energy price and technological progress both significantly promote the marginal effect of market reform on CO2 emission efficiency, the energy price shows a greater influence than technological progress. Infrastructure construction and urbanisation can inhibit the improvement of CO2 emission efficiency. Additionally, the proportion of secondary industries can delay the improvement of CO2 emission efficiency.