a nonparametric cost approach to scale efficiency starting with farrell fieldhouse 1962 a host of notiparametric models have been developed for calculation of scale efficiency a common property of these models is that they are specified in terms of input output data duality theory has taught us that technological characteristics may be analyzed from either the primal or the dual cost side the purpose of this paper is to introduce a nonparametric dual method of calculating scale efficiency

employability adaptability and flexibility changing labour market prospects 2000 employability adaptability and flexibility changing labour market prospects regional studies vol 34 no 7 pp 599 600

weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis reply to fare and grosskopf fare and grosskopf this issue claim that a single abatement factor suffices for modeling weak disposability in nonparametric production models and that the kuosmanen 2005 technology that uses multiple abatement factors is larger than necessary this article demonstrates by a numerical example that a single abatement factor does not suffice to capture all feasible production plans and that its use leads to the violation of convexity one of the maintained assumptions of the model we also prove that the kuosmanen technology is the correct minimum extrapolation technology under the stated axioms

grim down south the determinants of unemployment increases in british cities in the 2008 2009 recession lee n grim down south the determinants of unemployment increases in british cities in the 2008 2009 recession regional studies this paper investigates the impact of the 2008 2009 recession on unemployment in the sixty largest cities in great britain the key determinant of changes in unemployment was the skills of the population with highly skilled cities experiencing smaller increases cities with employment in financial services or manufacturing sectors experienced larger increases in unemployment whether a city has a specialized or a diverse economy appears less important than the industries in which the city is specialized the results highlight a problem as the largest unemployment increases were in cities seen as having least potential for future growth

nonparametric production technologies with weakly disposable inputs abstract in models of production theory and efficiency analysis the inputs and outputs are assumed to satisfy some form of disposability in this paper we consider the assumption of weak input disposability it states that any activity remains feasible if its inputs are simultaneously scaled up in the same proportion as suggested in the literature the shephard technology incorporating weak input disposability could be used to evaluate the effect of input congestion we show that the shephard technology is not convex and therefore introduces bias in evaluation of congestion to address this we develop an alternative convex technology whose use in the evaluation of congestion removes the noted bias we undertake a further axiomatic investigation and obtain a range of production technologies all of which exhibit weak input disposability but are based on different progressively relaxed convexity assumptions apart from the evaluation of input congestion such technologies should also be useful in applications in which some inputs are closely related or are overlapping and therefore satisfy only the weak input disposability assumption incorporated in the new models

one sided elasticities and technical efficiency in multi output production a theoretical framework one of the concepts that have sparked considerable interest in the theory of production and efficiency is that of returns to scale rts economics researchers typically define rts using the notion of elasticity considerable research activity on rts has also been observed by management science researchers who utilize the methodology of data envelopment analysis dea to gain insights on rts in this paper we present a theoretical framework that integrates existing economics and management science literature on rts and provides a solid foundation for research work in this area our framework defines discusses and proposes an approach to measure input and output oriented elasticities and one sided rts we demonstrate how the work done in dea is a special case of our framework and discuss the conditions under which the resulting two left hand and the two right hand elasticities can be equal future research directions are also discussed

measurement of returns to scale using non radial dea models abstract there are some specific features of the non radial data envelopment analysis dea models which cause some problems for the returns to scale measurement in the scientific literature on dea some methods were suggested to deal with the returns to scale measurement in the non radial dea models these methods are based on using strong complementary slackness conditions from optimization theory however our investigation and computational experiments show that such methods increase computational complexity significantly and may generate as optimal solutions contradicting optimization theory in this paper we propose and substantiate a direct method for the returns to scale measurement in the non radial dea models our computational experiments documented that the proposed method works reliably and efficiently on the real life data sets

an analysis of the driving forces of co2 emissions embodied in japan china trade abstract by using the latest china japan input output data sets and the index decomposition analysis ida approach this article analyzes the driving forces of co2 emissions embodied in trade between the two countries during 1990 2000 we found that the growth of trade volume had a large influence on the increase of co2 emissions embodiments in bilateral trade the dramatic decline in carbon intensity of the chinese economy is a primary cause in offsetting co2 emissions exported from china to japan over 1995 2000 we argue that a better understanding of the factors affecting co2 emissions embodied in international trade will assist in seeking more effective climate policies with wider participation in the post kyoto regime

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

converging or diverging a comparative analysis of trends in contingent employment practice in europe over a decade this paper makes a unique contribution to the hrm convergence divergence debate by examining whether organisations operating in europe over the 10 year time period preceding 2000 are converging in their adoption of contingent employment practice the susceptibility of contingent employment practice to both convergent and divergent pressures acts as a useful analytical lens data are drawn from organisations operating in germany spain sweden the netherlands and the uk in 1991 2918 organisations 1995 2048 organisations and 2000 1555 organisations the results suggest that convergence is limited by the institutional embeddedness of organisations

redundancy in an expanding labour market a case study of displaced workers from two manufacturing plants in southampton previous studies of redundancy have been derived from a restricted geographical base they have been predominantly concerned with workers made redundant by manufacturing firms in older industrial regions and have largely ignored redundancies in more buoyant labour market areas this paper examines the post redundancy experience of workers made redundant by two large manufacturing firms in southampton in the mid 1980s comparison with previous studies of redundancy in less prosperous labour markets in northern regions of the uk highlights contrasts in the proportions of workers finding alternative employment and in rates of pay working conditions and levels of job satisfaction the study also highlights the importance of gender in post redundancy experience another factor that has been neglected in previous studies

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

decomposing technical efficiency and scale elasticity in two stage network dea abstract the constant returns to scale assumption maintained by neoclassical theorists for justifying the black box structure of production technology in long run does not necessarily allow one to infer that there are no scale benefits available in its sub technologies most of real life production technologies are multi stage in nature and the sources of increasing returns lie in the sub technologies it is therefore imperative to estimate the scale economies of a firm not only for the network technology but also for the sub technologies to accomplish this two approaches are suggested in this contribution based on the premise concerning whether a network technology construct considers allocative inefficiency the first approach which is ours makes use of a single network technology for two interdependent sub technologies the second approach which is due to kao and hwang 2011 however assumes complete allocative efficiency by considering two independent sub technology frontiers one for each sub technology the distinction between these two approaches is important from a policy point of view since the network efficiencies revealed from these two approaches have distinctive causative factors that do not permit them to be used interchangeably

index decomposition analysis applied to co2 emission studies index decomposition analysis ida was first extended from energy consumption to energy related co2 emission studies in 1991 since then many studies have been reported covering various countries and emission sectors however unlike the case of energy consumption studies a comprehensive literature survey that focuses specifically on emission studies has so far not been reported in this paper we attempt to fill this gap by reviewing 80 papers appearing in peer reviewed journals from 1991 to 2012 in this application area the first part of this paper deals with the developments with regard to the ida approaches used by researchers and the scope and focus of their studies in the second part the empirical results reported in the surveyed studies are analyzed consolidated and presented by emission sector the objective is to reveal the relative contributions of key effects on changes in the aggregate carbon intensity and this is done by emission sector and by country the findings of both parts are useful in understanding the development of ida in the application area of emission study as well as the key drivers of aggregate carbon intensities in the past and their possible future developments

productivity and long term growth potential in the uk economy 1924 1968 this paper examines the long term structural determinants of labour productivity for the uk economy using a panel data set from 1924 to 1968 trade union product market competition and human capital explanations are embedded within the model and compared labour quality or human capital is found to be the most important of the explanations considered

marginal values and returns to scale for nonparametric production frontiers we present a unifying linear programming approach to the calculation of various directional derivatives for a very large class of production frontiers of data envelopment analysis dea special cases of this include different marginal rates the scale elasticity and a spectrum of partial and mixed elasticity measures our development applies to any polyhedral production technology including to name a few the conventional variable and constant returns to scale dea technologies their extensions with weight restrictions technologies with weakly disposable undesirable outputs and network dea models furthermore our development provides a general method for characterization of returns to scale rts in any polyhedral technology the new approach effectively removes the need to develop bespoke models for the rts characterization and calculation of marginal rates and elasticity measures for each particular technology

returns to scale and scale elasticity in data envelopment analysis abstract the purpose of this paper is to provide mathematical characterizations of the data envelopment analysis dea based scale elasticity that is computable for both frontier and nonfrontier units in order to accomplish this we first review existing frontier results extend them formally to the nonfrontier case and then analyze how the scale elasticity behaves we also study how shadow pricing can be done as an application of the scale elasticity and show how upper and lower scale elasticity bounds can be obtained finally we provide an illustrative example for the clarification and verification of our results

ghg emissions embodied in macao s internal energy consumption and external trade driving forces via decomposition analysis abstract as a member of the kyoto protocol macao faces the enormous challenge to tackle with energy conservation and greenhouse gas ghg emission reduction though many studies have been devoted to understanding macao s ghg emissions from energy consumption and external trade an investigation of the underlying driving forces is still absent therefore this study decomposed the energy related emissions change and imbalance in embodied emissions of external trade during 2000 2011 respectively by using the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method the economic scale effect and energy structure change were identified as the main driving factors of macao s increasing energy related emissions while trade structure and embodied emission intensity contributed to make macao a net importer of embodied emissions however some variations can be seen during the period concerned then the underlying reasons for the two decomposition results were further investigated on account of the results and analysis instructive policy implications can be put forward for macao to better proceed with energy conservation and emissions reduction

embedding the multinationals institutions and the development of overseas manufacturing affiliates in wales and north east england phelps n a mackinnon d stone i and braidford p 2003 embedding the multinationals institutions and the development of overseas manufacturing affiliates in wales and north east england reg studies 37 27 40 the impact of foreign direct investment fdi upon host regions is a topic of perennial interest within the fields of regional economics industrial geography and regional development much of the early literature here draws negative conclusions regarding the wider indirect impacts of fdi on host regions pointing to the branch plant syndrome in light of significant processes of corporate restructuring and the build up of host region institutional capacities however recent literature has claimed that the plants of multinational enterprises mnes are becoming increasingly embedded in regional economies against this backdrop this paper aims to provide a critical assessment of the regional embeddedness of fdi in wales and the north east of england based upon an extensive survey of o

carbon emission flow in the power industry and provincial co2 emissions evidence from cross provincial secondary energy trading in china abstract the accurate calculation of co2 emissions in every province in china is the basis for developing regional energy policies there is a huge fossil fuel reserve and production capacity in western china whereas their underdeveloped social and economic status means that there is lower demand the more developed eastern coastal regions of china show dynamic economic momentum and hence higher energy demand based on the carbon emission flows in network theory this paper proposes an approach to recalculate provincial co2 emissions from the perspective of secondary energy consumption this approach attributes co2 emissions to final energy consumers after considering cross provincial secondary energy trading especially cross provincial electric power trading in the regional power grid given the uneven distribution of energy resources and the imbalance of energy consumption among regions cross provincial secondary energy trading in china is significant especially in the power industry by adopting the approach proposed in this paper the provincial carbon intensity and the corresponding energy policy can be modified to make energy end users pay rather than the primary producer

co determination and innovation this paper examines the effect of the german co determination law of 1976 mitbestg on the innovative activity of german firms co determination applies to firms with 2 000 employees or more data from 1971 1976 and 1981 1990 on 148 firms are used to compare the number of patents granted to co determined firms before and after the introduction of the law several control variables are applied and in particular in order to avoid a possible bias from specific effects of firm size we compare the co determined firms with others before and after 1976 the results do not support the view that co determination slows down technological progress and reduces innovativity

the failure of training in britain analysis and prescription in the last decade education and training et reform has become a major issue in many of the world s industrial powers one theme which runs throughout these reform initiatives is the need to adapt et systems to the changing economic environment these changes include the increasing integration of world markets the shift in mass manufacturing towards newly developed nations and the rapid development of new technologies most notably information technologies education and training are seen to play a crucial role in restoring or maintaining international competitiveness both on the macro level by easing the transition of the workforce into new industries and at the micro level where firms producing high quality specialized goods and services require a well qualified workforce capable of rapid adjustment in the work process and continual product innovation this paper will highlight the need for policy makers and academics to take account of the two way nature of the relationship between et and the economy

creating self sustaining high skill ecosystems geographic clusters of high technology companies are an increasingly important source of wealth and job creation in the advanced industrial countries this article provides a framework for understanding the conditions that give rise to these self sustaining high skill ecosystems hses that is based on the cases of the highly successful biomedical and computer hardware and software firms clustered in northern and southern california the framework identifies four requirements that hses share in common with natural ecosystems a catalyst to trigger the start of their development ongoing nourishment a supportive host environment and a high degree of interdependence among the actors in the system the framework is then applied to the uk identifying those policy options that are necessary for gaining greater returns from the uk s strong research base

changes of co2 emissions embodied in china japan trade drivers and implications co2 emission embodied in trade is an important aspect to respond international carbon mitigation half of china s emission increase was due to production of exports in order to analyze the reason of such a rapid emission increase embodied co2 emission flows between china and japan for the period of 2000 2009 were estimated in this study by using emission embodied in bilateral trade eebt approach in order to raise policy implications for both countries from trade perspective decomposition analysis was further conducted in order to identify driving forces underlying changes during the study period moreover the concept of dependence on traded co2 was proposed for analyzing mutual dependence of china and japan s carbon emission and economy the results show that china was a net exporter of embodied co2 emissions between china and japan trade but both china s exported emissions and net emission transfer to japan began to decrease after 2007 more emissions were embodied in more advanced and less carbon intensive products especially for china s exports driving force analysis shows that trade volume was the main driver for the increase of embodied emissions and technology effect contributed mainly to the decrease the absolute value of technology effect was even larger than activity effect in some years this study also reveals that japan was relatively more dependent on china s co2 emissions and showed an increasing trend over the last decade while china s economic development was more dependent on imports from japan and such a situation reversed after 2006 this study suggests that china should further reduce its emission intensity for narrowing the gap of embodied emissions between the bilateral trade flows and japanese energy saving technologies should be transferred to china

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

evolution and drivers of production based carbon emissions in china and india differences and similarities abstract added global carbon emissions have mainly come from china and india since 2012 which indicates importance of two countries in curbing global co2 emissions thus their respective mitigation lessons have more realistic significance in developing more effective mitigation strategy this study compared the dynamic evolution of their co2 emissions and driving factors behind changes in order to find similarities and differences of two countries and provide available policy implications to further reduce carbon emissions firstly both china s and india s carbon emissions have been increasing during 2000 14 3 4 9 9 gt and 0 9 2 0 gt respectively however tendency of two countries varied differently growth of china s co2 have slowed down after the 2008 financial crisis while india s emissions were still accelerating at a high level on account of growing share of carbon intensive energy in the whole energy structure from the national and sectoral perspectives both trends of carbon emissions from two countries have been analyzed according to structural decomposition analysis efficiency gains and slowdown of economic growth in china contributed to most decline of co2 but both production and consumption structures urged emissions up while structure effects in india slightly reduced its co2 but low emission efficiency and expansion of trade scales caused growth of emissions on this basis firstly china should optimize production structures by upgrading industries while india should promote energy transformation and improve energy efficiencies secondly strengthening cooperation and communications with developed countries with advanced technology and experience may make more progress in climate change for two countries experience and lessons of emission reduction deriving from the two would also provide references for other regions

analysis of the ecological relationships within the co 2 transfer network created by global trade and its changes from 2001 to 2010 with the increasing scale and scope of global trade the magnitude of the co2 flows embodied in goods and services through international trade has aroused great concern among researchers and governments in this study we established a global network model of these co2 transfers from 2001 to 2010 using ecological network analysis and data from the world input output database for 40 selected countries whose gdp accounted for more than 85 of the total global gdp based on the utility analysis we determined the ecological relationships among the countries involved in the global trade network and their changes during the study period the analysis revealed that competition and exploitation control relationships dominated the global network with each accounting for more than 40 of the total relationships throughout the study period mutualism accounted for the smallest proportion less than 4 more than 80 of the competition and 75 of the exploitation control relationships were within europe or involved flows from europe to north america or asia finland france japan greece and spain had the largest proportions of competition relationships in denmark luxembourg malta and switzerland exploitation was dominant whereas in russia indonesia and india control was dominant our analysis identifies the key nodes of the many adverse ecological relationships within the global co2 network and those with more mutual relationships our work provides a scientific basis for developing more ecologically sustainable national and global co2 flows through trade

economic gains and environmental losses from international trade a decomposition of pollution intensity in china s value added trade abstract based on a multi regional input output model this study explores the temporal changes and driving forces of china s environmental losses relative to its economic gains from international trade with each of its 45 trading partners from 1995 to 2015 we find that china suffered larger environment losses per us value added through exports than almost all of its trading partners over time the environmental losses paid by china declined quicker than that of its bilateral trading partners the decomposition results of our research further show that the technology effect played a dominant role in this decline moreover the phenomenon that developed economies have outsourced dirty intermediate production stages to emerging economies via trade in intermediate goods has led to the emerging economies suffering greater environmental losses over time for certain economic gains from international trade

determinants of net carbon emissions embodied in sino german trade abstract the existing research on carbon emissions embodied in trade has been concentrated between net importing countries and net exporting countries few study has been conducted to analyze carbon emissions embodied in trade between net exporting countries to fill the research gap this work systematically investigated the net carbon emissions embodied in trade between the largest net exporter of developing countries china and the largest net exporter of developed countries german based on the non competitive input output analysis and the structural decomposition analysis was used to study the driving factors effecting the change of net embodied carbon emissions in sino german trade the results show the net carbon emissions embodied in sino german trade increased significantly with the sharp increase of net trade volume after china s accession to the world trade organization carbon transfer through trade was mainly concentrated in the carbon intensive industrial sectors in sino german trade this phenomenon was attributed to the differences in the trade structure and the production efficiency between china and germany the decomposition analysis shows china s intermediate input structure effect and the country structure effect of germany s final demand were the leading contributors to growth in net carbon emission in sino german trade which mainly was offset by china s carbon intensity effect finally some policy implications are offered

examining the multiple impacts of technological progress on co2 emissions in china a panel quantile regression approach abstract whilst a plethora of literature has viewed technological progress as one of the critical influencing factors in relation to energy consumption and co2 emissions little effort has been made to identify the sectoral differences in the relationship between technological progress and co2 emissions thereby this paper remedies the inadequacies in the extant literature by empirically investigating the impact of technological progress on co2 emissions specifically taking into account its heterogeneous effect in various economic sectors this paper first decomposes the effect of technological progress as taking place in heavy industry in light industry in construction industry and in service industry a panel quantile regression approach and a balanced city panel data model are then applied covering the period 2001 2013 in china the empirical results show that technological progress in heavy industry and light industry surprisingly facilitates a higher level of co2 emissions despite its prominent contribution to energy efficiency improvement meanwhile as distinct from the effect it shows in the heavy and light industries technological progress in construction and service industries exerts a negative effect on co2 emissions additionally this paper further discovers that the strength of the multiple impacts of technological progress also varies with the level of emitters by studying the heterogeneous effect brought about by technological progress in different economic sectors and emitters this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between co2 emissions and technological progress

examining industrial structure changes and corresponding carbon emission reduction effect by combining input output analysis and social network analysis a comparison study of china and japan abstract industrial structure adjustment is one solution for responding economic slowdown and environmental problems occurred during china s rapid industrialization such an adjustment may also lead to carbon emission reduction since it encourages industrial innovation and resource efficiency however few studies have been conducted on examining the effect of industrial structure adjustment on carbon emission reduction under such a circumstance this study develops an integrated evaluation model based on input output analysis and social network analysis to quantify the evolutionary trends of industrial structure demonstrate the inner relationship between different sectors and investigate the industrial structure related carbon emissions china and japan were selected as case study countries results show that industrial structure was gradually improved in china and various connections were established between different sectors for japan the industrial network densities were lower than for china and exhibited a downward trend that reflected the weakened relationship between different industries service sectors dominated the japanese economy as shown by the relatively higher degree centrality and betweenness centrality of service sectors the electricity and heat production sector was further investigated to illustrate the industrial structure related carbon emissions finally this study concluded that compared to the industrial structure features in a developed country such as japan china s industrialization is still in its infancy thus it is crucial to prepare industrial structure adjust policies so that the overall social economic performance can be improved

co2 emissions per value added in exports of china a comparison with usa based on generalized logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition abstract this study first analyzes co 2 emissions per value added epv in exports of china during 1995 2009 and compares it with that of usa second a generalized logarithmic mean divisia index glmdi method is proposed to decompose the epv gaps between china and usa into five effects this method generalizes existing lmdi methods and makes the multiplicative decomposition of a sum of several terms possible then attribution analysis on value added coefficient effect is conducted results show that aggregate epv of china s exports is 4 20 mt billion us dollars in 1995 which decreases to 2 48 in 2009 for usa it is 0 66 0 33 respectively epv of china s exports is several times greater than that of usa at sectoral level industrial sectors and transport sectors are top sectors with large epv in china s exports which corresponds to the case of usa epv gaps of the service sectors between china and usa have become increasingly prominent since 2000 decomposition results show that emission coefficients value added coefficients and input output structure are the main driving factors of the expanding epv gaps between china and usa attribution analysis on value added coefficient effect the fastest growing effect shows that electrical and optical sector has been the largest contributor to epv gaps between china and usa resulting from value added coefficient effect since 1998 and its effect sharply increases during 1995 2009 policy implications derived are finally discussed

continuity and evolution in an old industrial region the labour market dynamics of the rise and fall of northern rock dawley s marshall n pike a pollard j and tomaney j continuity and evolution in an old industrial region the labour market dynamics of the rise and fall of northern rock regional studies the northern rock mortgage bank was a high profile casualty of the credit crunch in 2007 an evolutionary geographical political economy approach demonstrates that northern rock s growth and decline was shaped by its location in an old industrial region and echoes the historical position of the peripheral region in the spatial division of labour a longitudinal investigation focuses on the labour market dynamics of northern rock s rapid growth and decline on the north east of england the northern rock case highlights the enduring occupational structure of the region s labour market and shows how older industrial regions suffer from a process of occupational disadvantage that restricts their ability to adapt to economic change

optimal weights in dea models with weight restrictions abstract according to a conventional interpretation of a multiplier dea model its optimal weights show the decision making unit under the assessment denoted dmu o in the best light in comparison to all observed dmus for multiplier models with additional weight restrictions such an interpretation is known to be generally incorrect specifically if weight restrictions are linked or nonhomogeneous and the meaning of optimal weights in such models has remained unclear in this paper we prove that for any weight restrictions the optimal weights of the multiplier model show dmu o in the best light in comparison to the entire technology expanded by the weight restrictions this result is consistent with the fact that the dual envelopment dea model benchmarks dmu o against all dmus in the technology and not only against the observed dmus our development overcomes previous concerns about the use of weight restrictions of certain types in dea models and provides their rigorous and meaningful interpretation

spatial spillover effects in determining china s regional co 2 emissions growth 2007 2010 abstract this study proposes an alternative input output based spatial structural decomposition analysis to elucidate the importance of domestic regional heterogeneity and inter regional spillover effects in determining china s regional co 2 emissions growth our empirical results based on the 2007 and 2010 chinese inter regional input output tables show that changes in most regions final demand scale final expenditure structure and export scale have positive spatial spillover effects on other regions co 2 emissions growth changes in most regions consumption and export preference help reduce other regions co 2 emissions changes in production technology and investment preferences may exert positive or negative effects on other region s co 2 emissions growth through domestic supply chains for some regions the aggregate spillover effect from other regions may be larger than the intra regional effect in determining regional emissions growth all these facts can significantly help provide a better deeper understanding of the driving forces behind the growth of regional co 2 emissions and can thus enrich the policy implications concerning a narrow definition of carbon leakage through domestic inter regional trade as well as a relevant political consensus about responsibility sharing between developed and developing regions inside china

piecewise loglinear estimation of efficient production surfaces linear programming formulations for piecewise loglinear estimation of efficient production surfaces are derived from a set of basic properties postulated for the underlying production possibility sets unlike the piecewise linear model of banker charnes and cooper banker r d a charnes w w cooper 1984 models for the estimation of technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis management sci 30 september 1078 1092 this approach permits the identification of increasing marginal products and estimation of the classical s shaped production functions methods are also provided for estimating technical inefficiencies and other production characteristics such as rates of substitution and transformation marginal products returns to scale and most productive scale sizes on the basis of observed production data the results of a simulation study are reported to illustrate the usefulness of this estimation method in empirical applications when there are a priori reasons to expect increasing marginal products in some regions of the production function a modified model is provided to extend this analysis to the situation of non competing outputs addressed by the bi extremal model of banker charnes cooper and schinnar banker r d a charnes w w cooper a schinnar 1981 a bi extremal principle for frontier estimation and efficiency evaluation management sci 27 december 1370 1382

a scale elasticity measure for directional distance function and its dual theory and dea estimation abstract in this paper we focus on scale elasticity measure based on directional distance function for multi output multi input technologies explore its fundamental properties and show its equivalence with the input oriented and output oriented scale elasticity measures we also establish duality relationship between the scale elasticity measure based on the directional distance function with scale elasticity measure based on the profit function finally we discuss the estimation issues of the scale elasticity based on the directional distance function via the dea estimator

an emergy and decomposition assessment of china japan trade driving forces and environmental imbalance abstract with the robust development of economic globalization international trade should be fairly conducted in order to strengthen the relations among different nations currently due to different resource endowments and trade policies different nations face different resources and environmental challenges previous studies suggested that even when trade seems balanced in monetary terms it may be unequal in terms of resources exchanges due to different purchasing power of national currencies as such imbalance also exist in terms of environmental quality of traded resources and related environmental costs and emissions such as embodied energy water land carbon ecosystem services under such circumstances it is necessary and urgent to identify environmental imbalance of international trade and seek appropriate tools so that more balanced and fairer trade among nations can be implemented this study investigates the quality of resource flows exchanged between china and japan during the period 2000 2012 emergy accounting a well established environmental accounting method is used in this study to quantify the environmental work past and present ecosystem services embodied in traded resources within a broader emergy based bio physical perspective a logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition approach is applied to identify the driving forces that affect the evolution of import export resources balance in the investigated period lmdi decomposes the driving forces into three factors a scale factor which depends on the total export volume b technology factor which depends on the emergy intensity of trade emergy of traded resources and c structural factor which depends on the trade structure mix of exchanged commodities results show that china was a net emergy exporter in the years 2000 and 2005 with figures of 7 46e 22 sej yr and 5 76e 21 sej yr respectively but was a net importer in the years 2008 and 2012 with imported emergy figures of 8 82e 22 sej yr and 2 43e 23 sej yr respectively scale and technology factors are the most significant drivers to promote china japan trade from an emergy point of view i e from the point of view of environmental quality assessment while the influence of structural factor was relatively marginal trade imbalance and lack of focus on environmental value of resources cannot be the basis for stable economic relations with partner countries which calls for compensation measures in money or resource terms this study by investigating the sustainability of china japan international trade also suggests a methodological approach to increase worldwide trade stability and fairness

temporal change of china s pollution terms of trade and its determinants abstract based on the world input output database wiod this study employed a revised pollution terms of trade ptt indicator to investigate the temporal change of china s environmental cost relative to its economic gains from international trade from 1995 to 2009 the results show that china has ptt larger than 1 indicating that china emits more emissions to obtain each unit of value added from exports than its trade partners over the period china s ptt first decreased from 1995 to 2001 and then increased from 2001 to 2009 the further decompositions show that improving technology is the leading driving force to decrease ptt while the change in global trade pattern is the leading force increasing ptt especially after 2001 we further decomposed the temporal change of china s ptt by income group of the trading partners the results show that the change in the global trade pattern is the crucial driving force behind the different changes of ptt by income group

a critical assessment of the evaluation of eu interventions for innovation in the sme sector in wales in this paper the eu structural fund intervention framework is critically assessed in an effort to reflect on the problems faced by policy makers when trying to make sense of the complexity associ

carbon dioxide co2 emissions during urbanization a comparative study between china and japan as the world s largest emitter of co2 china is facing increasing domestic and international pressures on emissions mitigation considering japan s leading position in energy conservation this paper conducts a comparative study between china and japan at the urbanization stages to analyze the similarities as well as differences of influencing factors of co2 emissions results indicate that although co2 emissions in japan and china showed the similar characteristics of rigid growth during the urbanization processes significant differences exist in factors such as co2 emissions per capita energy structure and energy intensity between the two countries which are the determinants for co2 emissions growth a cointegration model is constructed to examine the long run equilibrium relationship between co2 emissions and factors including gdp urbanization level energy intensity and cement manufacture empirical results show that there is a quadratic relationship between income growth and co2 emissions granger causality test is then adopted to explore the causal relationships among the variables the future co2 emissions and emission reduction potentials in china are estimated based on scenario analysis finally japan s valuable experience of reducing energy intensity and optimizing energy structure is concluded to provide important policy implications for china s strategic low carbon planning and low carbon transition

ratio based rts determination in weight restricted dea models abstract this paper provides computationally efficient approaches for determining to which returns to scale rts class a unit belongs in weight restricted data envelopment analysis dea models a non traditional computational algorithm is introduced the suggested approach is based on the calculation of certain ratios within the data set and offers obvious computational advantages over the traditional approaches involving the solution of standard dea models some theorems and algorithms are given computational advantages of the provided results are discussed and one of the algorithms is illustrated using real world data

returns to scale in convex production technologies the notion of returns to scale rts is well established in data envelopment analysis dea in the variable returns to scale production technology the rts characterization is closely related to other scale characteristics such as the scale elasticity most productive scale size mpss and global rts types indicative of the direction to mpss in recent years a number of alternative production technologies have been developed in the dea literature most of these technologies are polyhedral and hence are closed and convex sets examples include technologies with weakly disposable undesirable outputs models with weight restrictions and production trade offs technologies that include several component production processes and network dea models for most of these technologies the relationship between rts and other scale characteristics has remained unexplored the theoretical results obtained in this paper establish such relationships for a very large class of closed convex technologies of which polyhedral technologies are an important example

mixed partial elasticities in constant returns to scale production technologies abstract recently podinovski and forsund 2010 developed a linear programming approach to the analysis and calculation of a class of mixed partial elasticity measures in variable returns to scale vrs production technologies in the current paper we extend their approach to the constant returns to scale crs technologies and formulate linear programs required for the computation of elasticity measures among other results obtained in this paper we prove a new result valid in both vrs and crs technologies that allows us to identify the reason why the corresponding elasticity measure is undefined at the unit this removes the need for a preliminary sorting of the units into those units where the elasticity measure applies and those where it does not

weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis with undesirable outputs environmental economics and natural resources group at wageningen university in the netherlands weak disposability of outputs means that firms can abate harmful emissions by decreasing the activity level modeling weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis has caused some confusion this article identifies a dilemma in these approaches conventional formulations implicitly and unintentionally assume all firms apply uniform abatement factors however it is usually cost effective to abate emissions in those firms where the marginal abatement costs are lowest this article presents a simple formulation of weak disposability that allows for non uniform abatement factors and preserves the linear structure of the model

the local low skills equilibrium moving from concept to policy utility it is more than three decades since the publication of finegold and soskice s 1988 influential article the failure of training in britain analysis and prescription this widely cited publicati

a simple derivation of scale elasticity in data envelopment analysis in this paper we suggest a simple derivation of the formulae for the scale elasticity in the variable returns to scale technology as used in data envelopment analysis our development is consistent with the existing literature but the proof is much shorter and applies to the general case without any simplifying conditions

returning to work regional determinants of re employment after major redundancies abstractusing matched employer employee data on roughly 429 000 workers made redundant from large plant closures or major downsizing in sweden between 1990 and 2005 this paper analyses the role of the regional industry mix specialization related and unrelated variety in the likelihood of returning to work the results show that a high presence of same or related industries speeds up the re employment process while high concentrations of unrelated activities do not the role of related activities is particularly evident in the short run and in regions with high unemployment consequently the prospect of successful diversification is enhanced in regions with related industries

are labour markets necessarily local spatiality segmentation and scale this paper draws on recent debates about scale to approach the geography of labour markets from a dynamic perspective sensitive to the spatiality and scale of labour market restructuring its explo

energy co2 emissions and value added flows embodied in the international trade of the brics group a comprehensive assessment abstract the brics economies group i e brazil russia india china and south africa has become an important contributor to the growth of the world economy which is increasingly concerned about carbon emissions due to the recent increase in energy use in these countries while the embodied energy use related to emissions of the brics group has been discussed in the literature an integrated analysis of energy carbon footprints and value added flows associated with international trade among the brics group has to date rarely been reported based on an improved multi regional input output model south africa was extracted from the rest of the world in the world input output database wiod to analyze the above mentioned flows embodied in trade within the brics countries as well as between the brics group and other economies the results show that the brics economic entity was a net embodied flows exporter more flows were embodied in intermediate products than in final demand within the brics group compared with other brics economies china which is the largest transit country transferred more embodied flows from russia to other brics countries and drove more embodied flows from major economies including the united states and european countries outside the brics group than those within the brics group however china imported a relatively higher embodied energy and co2 in per unit value added from the brics countries than non brics countries while exporting relative lower embodied energy and co2 per value added to other brics economies than non brics countries the potential policy implications on cleaner development within the brics economies are discussed at the end of this paper

e business usage across and within firms in the uk profitability externalities and policy using data from the third uk community innovation survey we model the usage of e business across and within firms in the uk in the year 2000 as a single observation upon an integrated process of inter and intra firm diffusion the intra firm dimension is a significant extension to standard analysis the model estimates indicate that the pattern of e business usage reflects the heterogeneity of firms in terms of size other innovative activity and labour force skills generating differences in the payoffs to use as well as market and non market intermediated externalities the policy implications of the findings are discussed c 2008 elsevier b v all rights reserved

accounting the effects of wto accession on trade embodied emissions evidence from china abstract the indicators of the emissions embodied in exports the balance of emissions embodied in trade and the net emissions contributed by trade are used to measure the trade embodied environmental impacts from various angles a counterfactual scenario of without wto accession is formed as the comparative baseline with the support of a dynamic computable general equilibrium model then the difference between factual and counterfactual scenarios is worked out to reflect the impact of china s wto accession on emissions embodied in trade according to the present study wto accession produced a measureable increment of the emissions embodied in exports through exports expansion which slightly intensified environmental stress in china if considering the difference in emissions embodied in exports and imports then the difference of the balance of emissions embodied in trade between factual and counterfactual scenarios indicate that china has suffered more local emissions than its trade partners after its wto accession if considering the offset effect of imports embodied emissions to domestic emissions then the difference of the net emissions contributed by trade between factual and counterfactual scenarios indicate that wto accession had a trivial effect on aggregating trade embodied emissions the study results suggest that china should continue pushing for trade liberalization and at the same time reduce the adverse effects on the environment by reducing its total emissions intensity of domestic production and optimizing trade structure

imbalance of carbon emissions embodied in the us japan trade temporal change and driving factors abstract in us japan trade japan ran both economic export surplus and export co2 emission surplus with the us positive net monetary exports for japan were actually a kind of economic losses of the us while positive net export co2 emissions or net co2 emissions embodied in us japan trade were regarded as pollution transfer from u s to japan however due to lack of unified measurement units and standards between the two research fields it is difficult to directly assess whether positive effects of u s via carbon transfer outweigh negative effects caused by economic losses the study transforms absolute values of net monetary exports and net export co2 emissions from 2000 to 2011 in us japan trade into two ratios the ratio of net monetary exports to gdp of u s and the ratio of net embodied co2 emissions to total co2 emissions of the us by comparison the result shows that on average net monetary exports between u s and japan accounted for 0 45 of american gdp while ratio of net export emissions to aggregate consumption based co2 emissions of u s kept about 0 20 during the research period concerned which indicated that negative effects of economic losses in u s outweighed positive effects via carbon transfer in us japan trade furthermore a structural analysis of co2 emissions embodied in us japan trade during the 11 years is given the most significant driver was emission coefficients defined as co2 emissions per unit of energy consumption the driving force of emission coefficients led to dramatic reduction in co2 flows from japan to the us and thus caused decrease of net export emissions which also explained the major reason for the low ratio of export emissions to total co2 emissions of the us finally according to sectoral distributions of co2 flows between japan and the us emission sources of two countries presented different characteristics