Evaluating Regional Carbon Inequality and Its Dependence with Carbon Efficiency: Implications for Carbon Neutrality

This paper proposes a novel regional carbon emission inequality (RCI) index based on special kind of general distribution. Using the proposed RCI and China’s county-level panel data over time span 1997–2017, China is evaluated at intra-provincial, sub-national, national levels. Based that, dependence between efficiency studied by using copula functions nonlinear measures. The empirical results show that: (1) Shanghai, Tianjin, Inner Mongolia have worst inequalities; while Hainan, Qinghai, Jiangxi are three most carbon-equal provinces; (2) there divergence phenomenon in values municipalities past decade; (3) from national-level perspective, inter-provincial much greater than that intra-provincial level; (4) sub-national-level east region has highest value, followed northeast, west, central regions; (5) so-called "efficiency-equality (E-E) trade-off" each provincial administrative unit, meaning higher generally comes with inequality, i.e., price inequality; (6) re-grouping units via efficiency-equality cost industrial structure, respectively, both equality can be achieved some regions simultaneously, thereby getting out “E-E trade-off” dilemma. evidence may provide valuable insight regarding topic “equality efficiency” environmental economics, offer policy implications for economic planning coordination.