*Article* **Environmental Regulation, Local Government Competition, and High-Quality Development—Based on Panel Data of 78 Prefecture-Level Cities in the Yellow River Basin of China**

**Yifei Zhang 1,2, Yiwei Wang 2,\* and Ye Jiang <sup>2</sup>**


**\*** Correspondence: yiwei\_wang@yeah.net

**Abstract:** As one of the national strategies of China, the ecological protection of the Yellow River basin (YRB) is vital for the promotion of the high-quality development (HQD) of the regional economy. This paper uses the data of prefecture-level cities in the YRB from 2004–2019 to analyze the effect of environmental regulation and local government competition on HQD. The findings show the following: (1) Environmental regulation can significantly promote HQD in the YRB, and local government competition can significantly reduce HQD. The interaction effect shows that the promotion effect of environmental regulation on HQD weakens with the intensification of competition between local governments. (2) A heterogeneity analysis shows that environmental regulation has a more significant positive impact on HQD for the lower reaches of the YRB. (3) Using a threshold effect test, it is found that the impact of environmental regulation on the HQD presents a significant nonlinear positive effect with an increase in local government competition. When the local government competition represented by the level of economic catch-up exceeds the threshold value of 3.037, this positive effect decreases significantly.

**Keywords:** high-quality development; environmental regulation; local government competition; panel threshold regression model; Yellow River basin
