The coordination of regional economy and environment from the perspective of marketization: A case of Heilongjiang Province, China

over the past few decades, the Northeastern China has experienced a transition from the prosperity to depression. Pushing forward the coordination of economy and environment has been a critical way to revitalize the development in the Northeast region. This paper aims to estimate the relationship between economy and environment in Heilongjiang Province based on the panel data from 1981 to 2015 by applying the dynamic coupling coordination degree model. Then we examine the causality between maketization level and the prior measured coordination based on the panel data from 1987 to 2015 by the aid of regression analysis. Empirical results show that from 1981 to 2015, the coupling degree of economy and environment in Heilongjiang is well as a whole. Overall, the static coupling degree is volatile, while the dynamic coupling degree is smoother with showing an inverted U-shape with the inflection point in 2012. However, the degree of coupling coordination began to be less than 0.6 since 1987, which means that it would be in a passive state. In addition, the maketization level positively affects the dynamic coupling degree, and the reason why such coupling degree began to decline since 2003 can be attributed to the fact that the maketization reform has pushed forward the economic growth while at the expense of declining the quality of natural environment.