the empirical analysis of the determinants for environmental technological change a research agenda abstract technological change is usually considered a necessary albeit not sufficient condition for a transition to sustainability however the empirical analysis of the determinants to environmental technological change has not received too much attention in the environmental ecological economics literature and many open questions remain in this context based on a careful review of the literature this paper argues that further analysis should address several issues at different levels i e regarding the conceptual framework the thematic scope of the studies some methodological issues and other aspects related to the environmental policy variable first an integrated conceptual framework which takes into account the interplay between relevant variables influencing environmental technological change i e factors internal and external to the firm and characteristics of the environmental technologies and all the stages of this process with a greater emphasis on the invention stage should be developed other aspects should then be tackled including a focus on several themes i e a greater attention to cross sectoral technologies the barriers to different types of environmental technologies the international dimension of environmental technological change and environmental technological change in small and medium size enterprises methodological issues combination of case studies and econometric modelling and several issues related to the environmental policy variable

how should commodities be taxed market structure product heterogeneity and the optimal structure of commodity taxes abstract this paper is concerned with the form in which commodity taxes are best imposed and particularly with the appropriate balance between specific and ad valorem components this neglected issue is of policy importance in relation to the harmonization of tax structures within the eec and of theoretical interest as a point of contact between optimal tax theory and models of non price competition the roles of the two taxes as purely corrective devices under a variety of market forms are established and discussed the analysis suggests that heavily taxed commodities should normally be subject to high specific rather than high ad valorem taxes

commodity taxes under uncertainty abstract this paper considers the relative distorting effect on output of commodity taxes specific and ad valorem in a situation where a firm faces revenue uncertainty it is shown generally that this effect depends both on the precise nature of the firm s revenue uncertainty and on the degree of its risk aversion more specifically the distorting effect of each tax is characterised for a selection of objective functions and uncertain environments these characterisations are compared in order to show the influence of alternative specifications on the relative distorting effect

total factor carbon emission performance of the chinese transportation industry a bootstrapped non radial malmquist index analysis this paper proposes a non radial malmquist co2 emission performance index nmcpi for measuring dynamic changes in total factor co2 emission performance over time this index enables the consideration of non radial slacks in the conventional malmquist co2 emission index mcpi the nmcpi is calculated based on a non radial directional distance function derived by several data envelopment analysis dea models furthermore nmcpi could be decomposed into an efficiency change ec index and technological change tc index a bootstrapping approach is conducted to introduce statistical inferences into the nmcpi and its decompositions based on the proposed indices the dynamic co2 emission performance change and its decompositions of the chinese regional transportation industry from 2002 to 2010 are investigated the empirical results demonstrate that the total factor carbon emission performance of the transportation industry as a whole decreased by 32 8 over the period and this reduction was primarily caused by technological decline

trade policy in a super size me world abstract when a foreign monopolist sets a single market clearing price for its product the sign of the optimal tariff is determined by the extent of pass through also known as the terms of trade effect however when a foreign monopolist employs a second degree price discrimination mechanism in the domestic market the calculus of welfare maximization is very different while there are still terms of trade effects from the imposition of a tariff the existence of such effects are neither necessary nor sufficient to determine the sign of the optimal tariff instead the distribution of valuations within the population is the key determinant of the nature of policy intervention this result differs significantly from the uniform price case and is driven by the incentive compatibility constraint which places the distribution of types at the center of the analysis if there is a relatively large fraction of high valuation types in the population then domestic information rents may be increased by subsidizing imports thereby increasing the consumption of the low valuation types and moving the incentive constraint in favor of the high valuation types however if the share of high types in the population is relatively small then the increase in information rents will also be small but the fiscal implications of a subsidy will be large consequently the optimal policy will be to impose a trade tax

productivity growth and biased technological change in hydroelectric dams abstract this paper analyses productivity growth and the nature of technical change in a sample of portuguese hydroelectric generating plants over the period 2001 to 2008 in a first step we employ the luenberger productivity indicator to estimate and decompose productivity change a malmquist productivity index is also used for a comparative purpose the results paint a picture of mixed productivity performance in the portuguese energy sector the first decomposition underlines that in average the productivity variation is explained by the technological change then in a second step we analyse the nature of this technical change by using the recent concept of parallel neutrality briec et al 2006 we observe a global shift in the best practice frontier as well as in the evidence of input bias in technical change

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

total factor productivity and the measurement of technological change tfp is interpreted in the literature in different mutually contradictory ways changes in tfp are shown to measure not technological change only the super normal returns to investing in such change returns that exceed the full opportunity cost of the activity thus in the limit technological change can proceed with unchanged tfp measuring the effects of technological change instead requires counterfactual estimates reasons why changes in tfp are imperfect measures of super normal returns are also studied reasons connected with the timing of output responses the treatment of r d in the national accounts the omission of resource inputs and two types of aggregation la productivite totale des facteurs et la mesure du changement technologique la productivite totale des facteurs ptf est interpretee dans la litterature de manieres differentes et mutuellement contradictoires on montre que les changements dans la ptf ne mesurent pas le changement technologique mais seulement les rendements supra normaux sur les investissements dans de tels changements des rendements qui depassent le plein cout d opportunite de cette activite donc a la limite le changement technologique peut proceder sans que la ptf change mesurer les effets du changement technique reclame des evaluations d hypotheses de rechange les raisons pour lesquelles les changements dans la ptf sont des mesures imparfaites des rendements supra normaux sont aussi etudiees raisons connectees avec la reponse des niveaux de production le traitement de la r d dans les comptes nationaux l omission des intrants de ressources et deux types d agregation

has china s fast industrial growth been efficient an industry level investigation with a newly constructed data set we adopt contemporaneous nonradial and variable returns to scale assumptions in a data envelopment analysis dea exercise to address the inefficiency problem in chinese industries in different policy regimes using a newly constructed data set for 24 chinese manufacturing industries in 1952 2008 while confirming that the central planning period was indeed a graveyard for productivity that entailed severe technical regress and efficiency losses we do not find a steady improvement in efficiency during the reform period despite strong technical progress we argue that the resurgent prominence of the government and the state sector since the late 1990s especially following china s world trade organization accession has obstructed the efficiency improvement

excise taxes on a non uniform pricing monopoly ad valorem and unit taxes compared in this paper ad valorem and unit taxation are compared on a model that allows for various monopolistic pricing policies including uniform pricing and all three types of pigouvian price discrimination it shows that for any given unit tax on a non uniform pricing monopoly 1 there exists an output neutral ad valorem tax rate that gives rise to a higher tax yield than the unit tax and 2 there exists an ad valorem tax rate that welfare dominates the unit tax not only in the aggregate sense but also in the pareto sense taxes d accise dans le cas d un monopole qui n a pas une tarification unique comparaison des taxes ad valorem et unitaire ce memoire compare la taxe ad valorem et la taxe par

exploring the green total factor productivity of china s metallurgical industry under carbon tax a perspective on factor substitution abstract the characteristics of high emissions and high energy consumption in metallurgical industry have brought great challenges to the green and low carbon transition in china as a low carbon economic instrument carbon tax is generally considered to be an effective way to reduce co2 emissions through raising energy cost but whether it will promote the green total factor productivity gtfp of china s metallurgical industry is still unanswered under this background this paper uses provincial panel data over years 2000 2015 to investigate the impact of carbon taxation on gtfp of metallurgical industry from the perspective of inter fuel and inter factor substitution the lock in mechanism is also incorporated in the three stage estimation model to better reflect the asymmetric price response of factors and fuels the results reveal that the slow marketization process of energy price and the rigid demand for energy in china s metallurgical industry hinder the substitution effect of energy the implementation of carbon tax has limited effect on energy saving and co2 reduction in the metallurgical industry of china and levying a carbon tax has a negative effect on gtfp during the research period therefore the government should not achieve co2 reduction targets at the expense of green economic growth gtfp is suggested to be considered in future assessment criteria in the process of transforming to low carbon economy

a pareto comparison of ad valorem and unit taxes in noncompetitive environments abstract a literature that began with wicksell 1896 has shown that an ad valorem tax is welfare superior to an equal yield unit tax in both monopoly and oligopoly markets this paper proves a stronger result for any unit tax imposed on a monopoly there exists an ad valorem tax that pareto dominates it that produces larger profit tax revenue and consumer surplus the paper then considers whether this pareto result generalizes to all cournot nash oligopolies the paper shows that pareto dominance holds in such markets whenever the tax level exceeds a critical value that depends on various market parameters

the fallacy of only the strong survive the effects of extrinsic motivation on the persistence decisions for under performing firms abstract under performing firms persist even though existing theoretical perspectives indicate that they should be selected out of the market building upon threshold theory gimeno j folta t cooper a woo c 1997 survival of the fittest entrepreneurial human capital and the persistence of underperforming firms administrative science quarterly 42 750 783 and using staw s staw b m 1981 the escalation of commitment to a course of action academy of management review 6 4 577 587 theoretical model of commitment to a course of action we explore and test the factors that lead entrepreneurs to persist with under performing firms we found environmental munificence personal investment personal options previous organizational success and perceived collective efficacy impact the decision to persist with an under performing firm in addition extrinsic motivation moderates those relationships this research adds to the growing literature on highly persistent under performing firms and complements and extends threshold theory

indirect taxation and cournot equilibrium we analyse a cournot model of oligopoly in an industry which is subject to indirect taxation we consider value added as well as excise taxes we allow for various types of demand and cost conditions as well as cost differences across firms as the tax is raised two types of outcomes can prevail on the one hand the net price can increase which is shown to lead to an increase in market share of high cost firms on the other hand the net price can fall in which case efficiency is rewarded in that low cost firms gain market share this latter outcome which accords with intuition will obtain in most instances it is more likely to occur i with vat rather than with an excise tax ii with concave rather than convex demand and iii with decreasing rather than increasing marginal cost finally we show that an increase in vat can lead to higher profits for low cost firms provided cost differences across firms are large enough

foreign direct investment spillovers and technical efficiency in the indonesian pharmaceutical sector firm level evidence the spillovers of foreign direct investment fdi on domestic firms performances have been highly debated for many years this article contributes to this debate by analysing spillovers effects on technical efficiency of indonesian pharmaceutical sector using a unique unbalanced panel of highly disaggregated at five digit international standard industrial classification isic 210 firms over the period 1990 1995 1001 observations the stochastic production frontier spf and the data envelopment analysis dea based on malmquist productivity indices mpi have been used to test the spillovers effects of fdi on technical efficiency the empirical results from the spf show that foreign firms are more efficient than domestic competitors and the presence of the former increases the inefficiency of the latter similarly the results from the mpi demonstrate that fdi has a negative and significant impact on technical efficiency changes in domestic competitors but generate positive spillovers to domestic s

multi period efficiency and malmquist productivity index in two stage production systems abstract conventional two stage data envelopment analysis dea models measure the overall performance of a production system composed of two stages processes in a specified period of time where variations in different periods are ignored this paper takes the operations of individual periods into account to develop a multi period two stage dea model which is able to measure the overall and period efficiencies at the same time with the former expressed as a weighted average of the latter since the efficiency of a two stage system in a period is the product of the two process efficiencies the overall efficiency of a decision making unit dmu in the specified period of time can be decomposed into the process efficiency of each period based on this decomposition the sources of inefficiency in a dmu can be identified the efficiencies measured from the model can also be used to calculate a common weight global malmquist productivity index mpi between two periods in that the overall mpi is the product of the two process mpis the non life insurance industry in taiwan is used to verify the proposed model and to explain why some companies performed unsatisfactorily in the specified period of time

sectoral change catching up and slowing down oecd post war economic growth revisited abstract regression analysis of gdp growth since 1950 on pooled oecd cross sections indicates uniform technological catch up in all sectors but lower marginal labour productivity in agriculture the decline in opportunities to reallocate labour explains some of the post 1973 productivity slowdown

the comparison between ad valorem and specific taxation under imperfect competition abstract this paper compares ad valorem and specific taxation in two models of oligopoly with and without free entry predominantly ad valorem taxation implies a relatively low consumer price high tax revenue and when entry is precluded low profits ad valorem taxation dominates specific taxation from the welfare perspective the set of circumstances under which with free entry specific taxation raises welfare is a strict subset of that in which ad valorem taxation is welfare improving and in both models the maximisation of consumer welfare subject to a binding revenue constraint requires maximum reliance on ad valorem taxation

productivity and efficiency change and shareholder value evidence from the spanish banking sector productivity change and shareholder value have been analysed in the banking sector in the last few years although it should be noted that these two important aspects have been studied separately in this regard the main contribution of our study is to link these two lines of research by verifying whether those banks characterized by higher levels of efficiency and productivity change have a higher shareholder value to measure changes in efficiency and productivity we use the malmquist nonparametric technique which is calculated from data envelopment analysis dea linear programming approach the malmquist total factor productivity index enables separation of the catching up effect i e changes over time in technical efficiency from technological change i e the shift of best practice frontier over time due to technological progress our results for a sample of listed spanish banks in the period 2000 to 2004 confirm that those banks with higher efficiency and productivity changes have a higher

the impact of environmental expenditures on performance in the u s chemical industry abstract this study analyzes chemical industry companies with environmental expenditures to determine which ones have better financial performance in addition this study uses data envelopment analysis to evaluate the efficiency of firms with and without environmental expenditures this study also utilizes the malmquist productivity index mpi to analyze firms productivity change and a bootstrap method to test whether the indexes are statistically significant finally this study divides chemical industry companies into three main categories based on their products the results of this study provide significant evidence of a relationship between environmental expenditures and financial performance the findings suggest that firms with environmental expenditures have better efficiency and productivity hence the study encourages companies in the industry to put more effort into protecting the environment that can be through practicing cleaner production to create higher benefits

the role of environmental factors in growth accounting this paper explores a relatively new methodology the directional distance function method to analyse productivity growth the method allows us to explicitly evaluate the role that undesirable outputs of the economy such as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have on the frontier production process which we specify as a piecewise linear and convex boundary function we decompose productivity growth into efficiency change catching up and technology change innovation we test the statistical significance of the estimates using recently developed bootstrap methods we also explore implications for growth of total factor productivity in the oecd and asian economies copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

estimating most productive scale size using data envelopment analysis abstract the relation between the most productive scale size mpss for paparticular input and output mixes and returns to scale for multiple inputs multiple outputs situations is explicitly developed this relation is then employed to extend the applications of data envelopment analysis dea introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes ccr to the estimation of most productive scale sizes for convex production possibility sets it is then shown that in addition to productive inefficiencies at the actual scale size the ccr efficiency measure also reflects any inefficiencies due to divergence from the most productive scale size two illustrations of the practical applications of these results to the estimation of most productive scale sizes and returns to scale for hospitals and stem electric generation plants are also provided emphasize the advantage of this method in examining specific segments of the efficient production surface

productivity change technical progress and relative efficiency change in the public accounting industry we present evidence on components of productivity change in the public accounting industry toward the end of the 20th century using revenue and human resource data from 64 of the 100 largest public accounting firms in the united states for the 1995 1999 period we analyze productivity change technical progress and relative efficiency change over time the average public accounting firm experienced a productivity growth of 9 5 between 1995 and 1999 we find support for the hypothesis that technical progress rather than an improvement in relative efficiency was the reason for this productivity growth firms that were early movers into management advisory services mas and those that emphasized growth in mas over growth in the traditional audit and tax services enjoyed significantly higher productivity growth than their peers these firms also contributed significantly more to the industry s technical progress

eco efficiency of the western taiwan straits economic zone an evaluation based on a novel eco efficiency model and empirical analysis of influencing factors abstract obtaining the most economic benefits while using the least resources and causing the least environmental damage is an urgent and key problem in achieving sustainable development the concept of eco efficiency provides a comprehensive perspective for observing and solving this problem this paper proposes an extended data envelopment analysis model named the win us sbm as a comprehensive eco efficiency evaluation method that can accommodate undesirable outputs all the identification problems of decision making units dmus possible slacks of variables and the problems of an insufficient number of available dmus and intertemporal comparability china s western taiwan straits economic zone wts economic zone is an important regional economic growth center by applying win us sbm and arcgis software we investigated data on the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of eco efficiency in the wts economic zone for the years 2009 2016 later the global malmquist luenberger index was used to decompose the sources of growth in eco efficiency finally the main driving factors of eco efficiency were explored through a tobit regression analysis the empirical results show that 1 the overall eco efficiency of the wts economic zone had greatly improved increasing by 11 46 annually and the cumulative growth rate of eco efficiency was 110 84 from 2009 to 2016 2 the eastern area had the highest average eco efficiency followed by the western area and the middle area in that order also the growth rate of the middle area ranked first 16 68 whereas the eastern area had the slowest growth in eco efficiency 7 22 3 on the whole the growth of eco efficiency was driven mainly by technological progress and was restricted by the decrease in management level which implies that policy makers should focus on improving management and technical levels 4 high levels of economic development population density market openness and industrial structure had positive effects on the eco efficiency of the wts economic zone whereas energy intensity and expenditure on science and technology had negative impacts

radial and non radial decompositions of profit change with an application to indian banking abstract grifell tatje and lovell grifell tatje e lovell c a k 1999 profits and productivity management science 45 1177 1193 made significant contributions to the literature on the extended radial dea framework by decomposing profit change into six mutually exclusive components their approach however poses two basic problems first the radial estimates on these components might give conflicting signals about the direction of profit change after the full radial efficiencies are achieved when slacks are present second evaluations of these components using base period prices as weights can be potentially misleading to address these concerns we first introduce non radial dea models and then provide a few strong theoretical arguments in favor of using as weights either current period prices or an average price covering both periods to value the contributions of each of these components the indian banking sector is taken as a case study to illustrate the radial and non radial decompositions of profit change so as to empirically examine the role of competition on profit change and its drivers our broad empirical results are as follows first radial and non radial models yield diametrically opposite results on the contributions of various components second the increasing efficiency change trends in all ownership groups after 2002 indicate that the government reform process instituted on the banking industry has had a favorable effect on the performance of the indian banking sector third despite the fact that nationalized banks are the oldest banks their output and resource allocation behaviors do not reflect their learning experience

taxation and the output and welfare of third degree price discrimination the literature on third degree price discrimination dates back to the work by pigou 14 and joan robinson 15 over half a century ago the subsequent works on the output effect can be seen in edwards 3 silberberg 19 battalio and ekelund 1 greenhut and ohta 7 finn 4 smith and formby 20 formby et al 6 and shih mai and liu 18 the welfare effect by yamey 26 was expanded and generalized by schmalensee 16 varian 24 and schwartz 17 in addition nahata ostaszewski and sahoo 12 demonstrate a sufficient condition for price changes that guarantees a welfare increase with the twice differentiable and monotonically decreasing demand functions previous work on third degree price discrimination has not addressed the issue of taxation governments often levy excise taxes on firm s sales under conditions of third degree price discrimination such taxes can have depending upon the form of the tax quite different output and welfare effects this paper investigates the joint effects of third degree price discrimination and excise taxation in several different ways first in a fashion analogous to suits and musgrave s analysis of simple non discriminating monopoly 22 we consider the effects of ad valorem and unit specific excise taxes at a constant level of output but in a third degree price discrimination environment second in a similar manner we compare cost and demand ad valorem taxes and the so called musgravian transformation 11 27 under discriminatory conditions finally we compare the output and welfare effects of a specific cost ad valorem and demand ad valorem excise tax that generate the same level of revenues in a third degree price discrimination environment

decomposition of the fisher ideal index of productivity a non parametric dual analysis of us airlines data in this paper we offer a non parametric method of decomposing the fisher ideal index of productivity into individual factors measuring i technical efficiency change ii allocative efficiency change iii shift in the cost function iv scale economies due to output change and v an adjustment factor reflecting change in the output attributes cross section data from the us airline industry for the years i 983 and i 984 are utilised in an empirical application illustrating this method the rate of multifactor productivity growth mfpg over time in the single output multiple input case can be measured by the difference in the rates of growth in the quantity of output and the divisia index of input quantity when no technical inefficiency exists this rate of mfpg can be decomposed into two additive components i the rate of technical change measuring the rate of change in the volume of output holding the input bundle unchanged and ii a returns to scale effect showing change in productivity with changes in the input quantities without technical change when technical efficiency varies over time a part of the measured rate of mfpg would be due to efficiency

assessing productivity changes in uk hospitals reflecting technology and input prices in this study malmquist productivity indexes are used to evaluate the performance of acute hospitals in the uk over the period after the introduction of the internal market in the national health service in 1991 the indexes are computed using nonparametric programming known as data envelopment analysis and they are decomposed into multiple component measures to give insights into the trends in hospital performance overall it is found that productivity regressed in the year after the reforms but progressed thereafter so that overall there was a net progress both as far as the inputs and costs are concerned productivity progress is mainly due to overall efficiency progress which in turn is mostly attributed to allocative efficiency improvements technical change resulted in a small reduction in the amount of inputs used but also at higher production costs because of a worsening in the match between input mixes and relative input prices however it is suggested that the gains in productivity are not

i don t want to be green prosocial motivation effects on firm environmental innovation rejection decisions although the political and consumer consciousness has turned increasingly green many firms continue to resist the adoption of environment friendly technological innovations even in the face of higher costs negative health effects and stricter government oversight this article examines how business owners weigh the trade offs associated with environment friendly innovations by examining the role of prosocial motivation in their decision making process we use primary data to overcome a common restriction in studying environmental innovations the scarcity of relevant data to analyze how business owners expectations perceptions and motivations affect innovation in organizational processes and consequently the level of environmental friendliness of their products or services we found that prosocial motivation had a significant negative impact on innovation adoption and that it is expressed differently under high and low levels of customer compatibility possibly because business owners have a larger number of competing social objectives and priorities our results further showed that the innovation s ability to satisfy downstream customer demands has the greatest impact on environment friendly innovation adoption decisions by business owners this study enhances our understanding of how business owners make innovation decisions based on competing business environmental and social objectives and provides a foundation for future research in this area

regulatory reforms and productivity an empirical analysis of the japanese electricity industry the japanese electricity industry has experienced regulatory reforms since the mid 1990s this article measures productivity in japan s steam power generation sector and examines the effect of reforms on the productivity of this industry over the period 1978 2003 we estimate the luenberger productivity indicator which is a generalization of the commonly used malmquist productivity index using a data envelopment analysis approach factors associated with productivity change are investigated through dynamic generalized method of moments gmm estimation of panel data our empirical analysis shows that the regulatory reforms have contributed to productivity growth in the steam power generation sector in japan

total factor productivity growth in agriculture a malmquist index analysis of 93 countries 1980 2000 in this paper we examine levels and trends in agricultural output and productivity in 93 developed and developing countries that account for a major portion of the world population and agricultural output we make use of data drawn from the food and agriculture organization of the united nations and our study covers the period 1980 2000 due to the non availability of reliable input price data the study uses data envelopment analysis dea to derive malmquist productivity indexes the study examines trends in agricultural productivity over the period issues of catch up and convergence or in some cases possible divergence in productivity in agriculture are examined within a global framework the paper also derives the shadow prices and value shares that are implicit in the dea based malmquist productivity indices and examines the plausibility of their levels and trends over the study period

privatization of nippon telegraph and telephone was it a good policy decision nippon telegraph and telephone ntt corporation was privatized in 1985 under the economic assertion that a public enterprise is less efficient and less profitable than a private enterprise this assertion is referred to as the property right theory in economics and it is used as a theoretical rationale for privatizing publicly owned organizations this article empirically examines the economic assertion by comparing ntt s performance before and after its privatization data envelopment analysis dea is used as the research tool in this study which confirmed the economic assertion in terms of production based efficiency measures but it cannot find any major difference in its cost reducing corporate efforts thus this study presents serious management problems occurring within the ntt s partial privatization the partial privatization is now prevailing in the telecommunications industry all over the world this article also discusses the japanese business environment which makes ntt managerially ineffective under its public private joint ownership

the stakeholder theory and the common good the theory of the social responsibility of the firm oscillates between two extremes one that reduces the firm s responsibility to the obtainment of the greatest possible profit for its shareholders and another that extends the firm s responsibility to include a wide range of actors with an interest or stake in the firm the stakeholder theory of the social responsibility of business is more appealing from an ethical point of view and yet it lacks a solid foundation that would be acceptable to a variety of schools of thought in this paper i argue that the stakeholder theory could be founded on the concept of the common good first i explain the foundations of the theory of the common good the concept itself how it relates to the individual good and its role in the firm following that i explain how the theory of the common good could be applied to the stakeholder theory finally i draw some conclusions

upstream and downstream pollution taxations in vertically related markets with imperfect competition when two markets are vertically related the government can control pollution at the upstream as well as the downstream market levels this paper employs the stylized model of input price discrimination and compares the effectiveness of upstream and downstream pollution taxations we consider the situation in which downstream firms have heterogeneous abatement technologies and an upstream monopolist performs input price discrimination against them in order to mitigate pollution the government imposes input tax on the intermediate inputs and emission tax on the pollutant we show that the degree of input price discrimination decreases with a rise in the input tax and increases with a rise in the emission tax we further examine the effect of a green tax reform in which the government changes the source of taxation from input tax to emission tax we argue that although this green tax reform may reduce the tax revenue of the government it will certainly increase social welfare

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

modelling technical efficiency in cross sectionally dependent stochastic frontier panels summary this paper proposes a unified framework for accommodating both time and cross sectional dependence in modelling technical efficiency in stochastic frontier models by combining the exogenously driven factor based approach and an endogenous threshold efficiency regime selection mechanism this approach is able to deal with both weak and strong cross sectional dependence in a flexible manner using a dataset of 26 oecd countries over 1970 2010 we provide satisfactory estimation results for the production technology parameters and the associated efficiency ranking of individual countries we find a positive spillover effect on efficiency supporting the hypothesis that knowledge spillover is more likely to be induced by technological proximity furthermore our approach enables us to identify efficiency clubs endogenously

determinants of environmental innovation new evidence from german panel data sources abstract in most cases empirical analyses of environmental innovations based on firm level data relied on surveys for one point in time these surveys allow for the inclusion of many explanatory variables such as different policy instruments or the influence of pressure groups but it is not possible to address the dynamic character of environmental innovations this paper uses two german panel databases the establishment panel of the institute for employment research iab and the mannheim innovation panel mip of the centre for european economic research zew to explore the determinants of environmental innovations the econometric estimations show that the improvement of the technological capabilities knowledge capital by r d triggers environmental innovations environmental regulation environmental management tools and general organizational changes also encourage environmental innovation a result that has also been postulated by the famous porter hypothesis

measuring the efficiency of digital convergence abstract the paper suggests the use of data envelopment analysis dea and malmquist productivity index for keeping up with the trends in digital economy development effectiveness in the european countries we show that central and eastern europe countries converge to the eu average concerning the level of digital economy development while digital divide exists between the eu and the western balkan countries

technical efficiency and productivity analysis in indonesian provincial economies this article estimates inefficiency and total factor productivity tfp across indonesian provinces from 1993 to 2000 indonesia is a large emerging market economy but provinces within the country due to the island structure of the country are more distinct from one another compared to other countries we use a stochastic frontier methodology to estimate inefficiency and tfp we find that tfp fell by an average rate of 7 5 across provinces due to the decrease in technical efficiency in fact the majority of output growth within indonesia is explained by the accumulation of inputs in this sense economic growth within indonesia does not appear to be sustainable without reversing these trends

the effect of incentive reforms upon productivity evidence from the vietnamese rice industry in this study we use region level panel data on rice production in vietnam to investigate total factor productivity tfp growth in the period since reunification in 1975 two significant reforms were introduced during this period one in 1981 allowing farmers to keep part of their produce and another in 1987 providing improved land tenure we measure tfp growth using two modified forms of the standard malmquist data envelopment analysis dea method which we have named the three year window tyw and the full cumulative fc methods we have developed these methods to deal with degrees of freedom limitations our empirical results indicate strong average tfp growth of between 3 3 and 3 5 per cent per annum with the fastest growth observed in the period following the first reform our results support the assertion that incentive related issues have played a large role in the decline and subsequent resurgence of vietnamese agriculture

malmquist productivity indexes and fisher ideal indexes comment fare and grosskopf i992 henceforth abbreviated as fg showed that under some conditions the productivity index defined as the geometric mean of two input based malmquist productivity indexes is equal to the quotient of the fisher input quantity index and the fisher output quantity index both fisher indices can be computed from observed prices and quantities these conditions appear to be so strong that they will almost certainly never be fulfilled in practice this is shown by a careful inspection of fg s proof however under slightly milder but more plausible conditions it can be shown that the quotient of the fisher input index and the fisher output index is a reasonable approximation of the productivity index consider a firm at two time periods t o i with different technologies which are modelled by the input correspondences lt y x x can produce y x c rn yce rm it is assumed that the sets lt y are closed and convex and that inputs are strongly disposable the vectors x yt wt pt t o i denote observed inputs observed outputs observed input prices and observed output prices respectively the productivity index is defined as

is inflation in developing countries driven by low productivity or monetary growth abstract this paper investigates whether inflation in developing countries is driven by retrogression in productivity or by monetary expansion our empirical methodology relies on growth accounting non parametric and generalized method of moment techniques results indicate that inflation is primarily driven by monetary growth

eco efficiency change in power plants using a slacks based measure for the meta frontier malmquist luenberger productivity index abstract malmquist luenberger index is a popular index deployed for evaluating eco efficiency and productivity change over a certain period when both desirable and undesirable factors are jointly produced in some production processes however conventional data envelopment analysis dea models used for computing this index are unable to distinguish the various technologies employed by the decision making units when heterogeneity exists in the technology the meta frontier malmquist luenberger approach is adopted to evaluate eco efficiency and productivity change over a period when undesirable outputs are incorporated in the analysis of efficiency in this paper a new slacks based dea measure is developed and used to compute the meta frontier malmquist luenberger productivity index this approach is then deployed to evaluate 48 iranian thermal power plants productivity change in three different categories steam gas and combined cycle over an eight year period of restructuring in the power industry this technique enables the calculation of eco efficiency change of thermal power plants operating under different technologies as well as the technology gap ratios and measures the extent to which the efficiency frontiers of individual categories of power plants deviate from the meta frontier the results reveal that the last years of the restructuring period saw a greater rate of productivity growth compared to the initial years and evidence of significant eco efficiency improvements over the period in all the three types of the thermal power plants finally it is expected that the findings in this study aid policy makers and power industry regulators in developing sustainable energy policies towards environmental protection and planning power plant operations

sources of productivity growth using the fare primont decomposition an empirical application to the irish beef sector several competing methodologies for tfp estimation have been developed in the past decades a popular approach in the literature is index number computation the most widely implemented tfp indices

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

total factor carbon emission performance of fossil fuel power plants in china a metafrontier non radial malmquist index analysis article i nfo this paper proposes the metafrontier non radial malmquist co2 emission performance index mnmcpi for measuring dynamic changes in total factor co2 emission performance over time the mnmcpi method allows for the incorporation of group heterogeneity and non radial slack into the previously introduced malmquist co2 emission performance index mcpi we derive the mnmcpi by solving several non radial data envelop ment analysis dea models we decompose the mnmcpi into an efficiency change ec index a best practice gap change bpc index and a technology gap change tgc index and based on the proposed indices we examine the dynamic changes in co2 emission performance and its decomposition of fossil fuel power plants in china for the 2005 2010 period the empirical results show a 0 38 increase in total factor co2 emission performance as a whole and a u shaped mnmcpi curve for the sample period because companies owned by the central government lack innovation and technological leadership the results suggest a missing link in the role of the central government in promoting co2 emission performance

a non parametric analysis of productivity the case of u s and japanese manufacturing a nonparametric analysis of technology technical change and productivity is presented in the context of cost minimizing behavior a number of nonparametric tests concerning the existence and nature of technical change are applied to u s and japanese manufacturing data nonparametric measures of technical change are presented copyright 1990 by american economic association

efficiency and technical progress sources of convergence in the spanish regions the paper analyses the contribution of efficiency as a mechanism of labour productivity convergence taking as the unit of analysis the spanish regions in the period 1964 1993 using the stochastic frontier approach a translogarithmic production function is estimated for the different sectors of the spanish regional economy demonstrating on this basis the existence of substantial differences in efficiency between sectors as well as between regions with regard to convergence the results obtained indicate that at aggregate level the convergence observed in labour productivity is explained by the faster growth of the capital labour ratio of the initially poorer regions and the contribution of technical change and the efficiency hence by the convergence of tfp however the information by sectors shows different results thus on the one hand the importance of the convergence in production per employee is seen in all sectors except agriculture and on the other it is observed that technical change is a

innovation and the international diffusion of environmentally responsive technology abstract new evidence is presented on environmental innovation and diffusion over the 1970s and 1980s at a global level a substantial amount of innovations occurred in the united states japan and germany the share of environmental patents in all patents varied between 0 6 and 3 and as such was higher than the corresponding share of pollution abatement expenditure in gdp japanese environmental innovation rates were consistently high certain plausible connections between environmental regulation and innovation also emerge across these three countries and over time innovation responded to pollution abatement expenditure an indicator of the severity of environmental regulations environmental patenting rates in developing countries were also high reaching 2 in many years in brazil developing country innovators obtained a non trivial number of patents most of which appear geared towards adapting imported technologies to local conditions however domestic innovation was only one path to new technologies imports of disembodied environmental technologies foreign patents registered in developing countries were substantial foreign patents were typically important or generic patents evidence also suggests that such patents protected intellectual property in equipment exported developing countries especially in east asia often chose to obtain technologies embodied in pollution abatement equipment

bridging the gap between partial and total factor productivity measures using directional distance functions technical dependencies as well as data constraints limit our ability to allocate inputs across sectors and hence our ability to measure sectoral productivity we adapt a directional measure of efficiency to the measurement of sector specific productivity that does not require allocating all inputs across sectors applied to the agricultural sector of a group of countries the results show important differences in livestock and crops productivity growth commonly used partial factor productivity measures for livestock and crops tend to overestimate productivity growth in most developing countries while underestimating it in european countries

performance and efficiency in colombia s power distribution system effects of the 1994 reform we assess evolution in performance efficiency and productivity of colombia s power distribution utilities before and after the 1994 regulatory reform that introduced electricity market activities for the power sector in 12 distribution companies from 1985 to 2001 performance is evaluated contrasting changes in mean and median by wilcoxon rank sum and pearson tests on financial and other performance indicators technical efficiency is measured by means of data envelopment analysis dea the nature of the dataset allows the estimation of malmquist productivity index and its evolution in time results show a recovery after the reform in the main performance indicators of profitability partial input productivity and output plant efficiency and productivity increased after the reform mainly in the largest utilities used as benchmarks in the dea efficiency scores measures meanwhile the less efficient power distribution companies did not improved after the reform and were not able to undertake plant restructuring to catch up in plant efficiency with respect to the pareto efficient input allocations econometric results on dea efficiency scores suggest a positive effect of policy reform

the evolution and main determinants of productivity in brazilian electricity distribution 1998 2005 an empirical analysis abstract this paper estimates changes in the productivity of the brazilian electricity distribution sector using data envelopment analysis dea on a panel of 18 firms from 1998 to 2005 the study decomposes the productivity change of these distribution firms in terms of technical efficiency scale efficiency and technical progress this exercise aims to help the understanding of the main determinants of the evolution of productivity focusing its relationship with the restructuring process implemented in the 1990s tfp index records a yearly positive growth rate of 1 3 in the whole period under analysis for all firms technical change was the main component behind this evolution with an average growth of 2 1 per year while technical efficiency presented a yearly negative performance of 0 8 the results prove that in general terms the incentives generated in the reform process do not seem to have led the firms to behave in a more efficient manner

evaluating stakeholder theory this paper is the third in a series of four that is directed at understanding and assessing stakeholder theory for the purposes of business ethics it addresses the suitability and viability of the theory rejecting objections of a moral and efficiency sort based respectively on claims about property rights and the economic superiority of the alternative stockholder approach but accepting that implementation problems require limiting both the number of groupings admitted to stakeholder status and the degree of responsibility towards them the conclusion looks forward to the construction of a suitably limited version of the stakeholder approach in a fourth paper drawing upon this one and the previous two