How can green finance promote the transformation of China's economic growth momentum? A perspective from internal structures of green total-factor productivity

Green financing is a crucial tool for promoting China's economic growth and helping to achieve carbon neutrality, but its implications on the internal dynamics of green economy remain uncertain. This study examines the impacts of green finance on China’s Green Total Factor Productivity (GTFP) and its internal factors, including technical innovation, industrial structure, balanced regional growth, scale, and resource allocation efficiency, by using a three-hierarchy meta-frontier Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and provincial panel data from 2008 to 2020. The findings show that: (1) regional green finance development may greatly boost the growth of GTFP, and the findings remain reliable after applying a series of robustness tests; (2) further research finds that green finance enhances GTFP by promoting technological innovation, facilitating the optimization of industrial structure, and improving resource allocation efficiency; and (3) there are significant spatial heterogeneities in this effect. The effect of green finance on GTFP is more pronounced in developed and market-oriented regions. This study helps to understand the pathways of green finance affecting the transformation of green economic growth and formulate differentiated regional policies in light of local conditions.