The Yangtze River Economic Zone is an important pattern of China's economic planning. This paper collected the data of cities in the Yangtze River Economic Zone from 2006 to 2018, by applying the epsilon-based measure (EBM) method and global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index, calculated the green total factor productivity (GTFP), and analysed the distribution and influencing factors of GTFP in time and space. The main conclusions are as follows: 1) the overall GTFP of cities in the Yangtze River Economic Zone has shown an upward trend over time, while the development of cities in the middle and lower reaches is better than that of upstream cities; 2) the per capita GDP, the proportion of the tertiary industry, and the centralised treatment rate of sewage treatment plants can significantly promote the growth of GTFP, while the proportion of secondary industry and the number of students in colleges and universities have negative effects.
Chen et al. (Thu,) studied this question.