Abstract:

Much attention has been paid to the environmental problem caused by poor efficiency of energy use. Most of all, we should realize the problem such as global warming and the frequent appearance of the "haze" weather. For sustainable development in all regions, it is necessary to take measure to solve the problem above, and undoubtedly, efficiency improvement is the route one must take to alleviate the contradiction between energy supply and demand and to alleviate the pressure of environmental protection. In recent years, it has been a matter of great concern on the ways of energy-saving and emission-reduction supported by financial system. How to relieve the financing constraints of enterprise technological innovation, and to improve the optimal allocation of regional resources, as well as the transmission path to push forward progress in energy-saving and emission-reduction, is question which is still worth discussing. Perfect financial system can provide strong support through scale expansion, structure adjustment and efficiency promotion for resources rational allocation and utilization. It is of guiding significance to grasp the current situation of energy efficiency in China and formulate effective financial policies to explore the impact mechanism and transmission path of financial development on energy efficiency. China’s low regional energy efficiency is reflected in two aspects: usage and allocation. On the one hand, low technology level and extensive energy use have seriously affected the improvement of energy efficiency, high cost of equipment retrofits and technological innovations and the trade-offs of consistently low energy price make the company less efficient in internal energy efficiency development, Combining with a longer return on investment which causes serious external financing constraints. On the other hand, the substitution of elements that deviate from the optimal combination of factors makes the energy allocation efficiency decline, factor market imperfection, and the government's price control on primary energy causes the energy price to be seriously underestimated. The relative price distortion of capital, labor and energy makes the micro-enterprises usually lack of motivation for technological innovation or improvement under the trade-off of cost and revenue, continuing using low-cost energy for factor replacement to maintain production.Some progress has been made in theoretical research on the impact of financial development on energy efficiency both here and abroad, but there are still some limitations. Firstly, in terms of the selection of financial development indicators, the existing literature pays less attention to the systemic integrity of financial development, depicts financial development only from the perspective of scale, ignores the impact of changes in financial structure and improvement of financial efficiency on energy efficiency. Therefore, it makes the conclusion biased because it can not cover all the essentials of financial development. Secondly, there are abundant models to test the relationship between financial development and energy efficiency, but most of these models are linear ones. This paper argues the complex non-linear relationship between financial development and energy efficiency, which is resulted in the differences of regional resource endowment, economic level and industrialization degree. This non-linear relationship is also the main reason for the inconsistency of the existing literature on the direction and extent of the impact of financial development on energy efficiency.The main work and contributions of this paper mainly focus on the following two aspects: First, grasp the systemic characteristics of financial development, and regard it as a continuously dynamic optimization, multi-functional whole, and integrate financial structure and financial efficiency into the analytical framework of financial development, the mechanism and conduction path of financial development to energy efficiency are combed from three aspects: the improvement of financial structure, the increase of financial scale and the improvement of financial efficiency. Secondly, fully consider the non-linear impact of regional heterogeneity. Try to use threshold regression method to examine the impact of financial development on energy efficiency in different regions and the phased characteristics of the mechanism. Try to explore the stage characteristics and mechanism of financial development affecting energy efficiency, and explore effective ways for regional financial development to improve energy efficiency. These are of guiding significance for grasping the current energy efficiency of various regions and formulating effective financial policies.This paper grasps the dynamic and systematic characteristics of financial development, incorporates structural and efficiency factors into the analytical framework of financial development, and sorts out the influence mechanism and conduction path of financial development on energy efficiency. Panel data of 28 provinces in China from 2000 to 2014 were selected to examine the impact of financial development on energy use and allocation from three dimensions: size, structure and efficiency. Threshold regression method is used to examine the stage characteristics of the impact of financial development on energy efficiency in different regions with industrial structure as the threshold variable. Investigate the non-linear relationship between financial development and energy efficiency, find the internal law that financial development affects energy efficiency with the adjustment of industrial structure, and explore the effective ways of regional financial development to improve energy efficiency. The following conclusions are obtained through the above research: (1) Financial scale expansion, structural adjustment and efficiency improvement affect energy technology utilization efficiency and energy allocation efficiency respectively by alleviating technology improvement financing constraints and optimizing resource allocation. (2) Due to the existence of problems such as survivability production, hidden cumulative effect and intrinsic incentive of resource allocation, the influence of financial development on the utilization efficiency and allocation efficiency is not simply linear, but has significant stage characteristics with the adjustment of industrial structure: ①Compared with energy utilization efficiency, the impact of financial development on energy allocation efficiency is more sensitive to the impact of industrial structure environment；②The expansion of bank credit and capital market has staged substitution effect in promoting energy efficiency；③Market-oriented financial restructuring can better improve the energy allocation efficiency.

Key words: financial development, energy efficiency, industrial structure, SBM, threshold effect