determining the optimal carbon tax rate based on data envelopment analysis carbon tax policy is widely used to control greenhouse gases and how to determine a suitable carbon tax rate is very important for policy makers considering the trade off between environmental protection and economic development in an industry regulated by carbon tax policy we consider two competing firms who sell ordinary products and green products respectively in order to promote the firm who sells ordinary product to reduce carbon emissions the government of china imposes carbon tax on the ordinary products for the government three objectives are considered when it makes carbon tax policy they are increasing the government revenue reducing the government expenditure and decreasing the carbon emissions for the firms it is important to explore their pricing strategies taken into account of the government tax policy to find an optimal carbon tax rate and to achieve the three objectives simultaneously we consider this as a multiple criteria decision making problem hence we propose to use a centralized data envelopment analysis dea approach to solve it we find that when one firm produces ordinary products and the other produces green products the government may set a high tax rate while when both firms sell ordinary products the optimal tax policy for each firm is different and the government may impose a higher tax rate for one firm and a lower tax rate for the other firm

paired comparison and contingent valuation approaches to morbidity risk valuation abstract this research uses an experimental approach for eliciting consumer valuations of morbidity risk reductions associated with safter chemical products and introduces the paired comparison questions approach to non market valuation in four applications the paired comparisons approach yields higher morbidity valuations than the more familiar contingent valuation approach however both methodologies produce large values of morbidity reduction benefits in comparison to estimates derived from wage hedonic studies explanations for the difference in the estimates and their magnitudes are suggested along with the public policy implications

vertical trading and uneven development abstract the phenomenon of vertical trading in which the center exports a good involving a high degree of processing which leads to economy wide learning and the periphery exports a good which does not generate such effects is formalized in a simple dynamic model of trade it is shown that the periphery can lose from such trade relations conditions under which this can occur are shown to involve parameters of the learning functions and the sizes of the two countries

welfare specifications and optimal control of climate change an application of fund the sensitivity of the optimal control of carbon dioxide emissions to the specification of the social welfare function is systematically explored using the fund model increasing risk aversion emphasises climate change damages relative to emission reduction costs but at the same time increases the discount rate of consumption without international co operation the discount rate effect dominates so that optimal control decreases with increasing risk aversion with international co operation optimal control first increases then decreases with increasing risk aversion since climate change falls heaviest on the poor optimal control increases with increasing inequity aversion full fledged intergenerational welfare functions on the one hand emphasise climate change damages but on the other hand place more weight on current poorer generations in fund the two tendencies almost cancel

explaining the choice of organic produce cosmetic defects prices and consumer preferences the choice between organic and conventional produce was estimated empirically using a two equation probit model data were collected in store on cosmetic defects produce prices and consumers demographic and economic traits store choice displayed a significant impact on the probability of purchasing organic produce shoppers at the specialty grocer were sensitive to price differences between organic and conventional items households with children under eighteen were more likely to purchase organic produce while shoppers with graduate or professional degrees were less likely to do so differences in cosmetic defects had statistically significant albeit small effects on the probability of purchasing organics

resource allocation based on efficiency analysis the purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to a resource allocation problem that typically appears in organizations with a centralized decision making environment for example supermarket chains banks and universities the central unit is assumed to be interested in maximizing the total amount of outputs produced by the individual units by allocating available resources to them we will develop an interactive formal approach based on data envelopment analysis dea and multiple objective linear programming molp to find the most preferred allocation plan the units are assumed to be able to modify their production in the current production possibility set within certain assumptions various assumptions are considered concerning returns to scale and the ability of each unit to modify its production plan numerical examples are used to illustrate the approach

impact of emission regulation policies on chinese power firms reusable environmental investments and sustainable operations abstract this study investigates the impact of emission regulation policies i e emergency response policy versus long term protection policy on the investment levels of reusable environmental facilities e g desulphurization pumps used by coal fired power plants in china to improve their sustainable operations to set up a baseline for further analysis and compare the impact of emission regulation policies an improved framework for performance evaluation of sustainable operations is developed in this study by integrating classical data envelopment analysis dea and exponential learning curve the proposed mathematical models are applied into an empirical study of 27 major million kw coal fired power plants in mainland china empirical analysis shows that the interactions among official emission regulation policies reusable environmental investment rei and sustainable operations management of coal fired power plants in china several policy suggestions are provided for power firm managers and policy makers in china specifically we suggest that the chinese government should implement long term protection policies in less developed regions instead of emergency response policies

an economic evaluation of the environmental benefits from pesticide reduction abstract previous studies on the environmental impacts of pesticide use have tended to focus either on measuring damages through changes in relative risks to various environmental categories or examining the trade off between pesticide use levels and abatement costs this study uses the physical risk assessment approach combined with contingent valuation survey results on consumers willingness to reduce pesticide risk the reduction in external costs associated with the changes in pesticide use in ontario agriculture between 1983 and 1998 is us 188 per household the environmental benefits are largely due to the reduction in the level of high and moderate risk pesticides

estimating the marginal abatement cost curve of co2 emissions in china provincial panel data analysis abstract this paper estimates the marginal abatement cost curve macc of co2 emissions in china based on a provincial panel for the period of 2001 2010 the provincial marginal abatement cost mac of co2 emissions is estimated using a parameterized directional output distance function four types of model specifications are applied to fit the mac carbon intensity pairs the optimal specification controlling for various covariates is identified econometrically a scenario simulation of china s 40 45 carbon intensity reduction based on our macc is illustrated our simulation results show that china would incur a 559 623 yuan t roughly 51 57 increase in marginal abatement cost to achieve a corresponding 40 45 reduction in carbon intensity compared to its 2005 level

the energy policy outlets for community acceptance of ecological investment in china abstract policy implication about satisfactions of energy use and housing are much sensitive to social discount rate changes which can increase the dissatisfaction of residential happiness because of an increasing price mechanism when per capita resource faces to decline we thus estimate the private expected rates of return on ecological investment to improve urban and peri urban environmental infrastructures are about to 7 54 and 18 37 respectively the endogeneities of income and saving rise can increase the uncertain part of private discount rate up to a higher estimated subjective social discount rate about 14 46 for urban or 8 86 for peri urban environmental infrastructures improvement the estimated time preference rate can be raised from 1 to 1 72 the prediction of these estimated private discount rate can ease at least 20 of the dissatisfaction to energy use and 10 of the dissatisfaction to housing conditions therefore we suggest opening the landscape rights to individual willingness to invest and providing options to let people pay a part of their pensions for temporal permits to living in some well served villages where are close to the places with advanced environmental amenities and being supported by central planning policy via the crowdfunding operation for improving environmental quality

efficient resource allocation via efficiency bootstraps an application to r d project budgeting resource allocation decisions are crucial for the success of an organization this paper proposes an integrated approach to resource allocation problems in which decision makers have one observation of the multiple input output criteria of candidates we offer important improvements over existing approaches based on the widely used data envelopment analysis dea which has two major limitations in its application to resource allocation first traditional dea models compute efficiency scores by optimizing firm specific shadow prices of inputs and outputs this could be problematic because in practice stakeholders would usually require unanimously agreed upon trade offs among evaluation criteria second previous allocation approaches based on dea do not allow for controlling the risk exposure of allocation portfolios to tackle these problems we propose an efficiency measure based on equilibrium shadow prices of different criteria and we use the bootstrap efficiency distributions to gather information regarding efficiency variations and correlations through our methodology decision makers can obtain the risk minimizing allocation portfolio we illustrate the proposed approach through an empirical r d project budgeting problem in which we allocate funding according to the projects efficiency distributions

optimal path for controlling co2 emissions in china a perspective of efficiency analysis this paper examines the optimal control of co2 emissions from a perspective of efficiency analysis several centralized data envelopment analysis dea models are introduced to study the optimal allocation of co2 emissions under spatial temporal and spatial temporal allocation strategies respectively the models have been used to determine the optimal paths for controlling co2 emissions at provincial and regional levels in china a sensitivity analysis of the optimal path on the emission control coefficient under spatial temporal allocation strategy is further carried out our empirical results show that more developed regions should take emission reduction responsibility earlier than less developed regions in china of the three allocation strategies spatial temporal allocation strategy seems to be a better choice for achieving the optimal control of co2 emissions at country level since it is more encompassing by allowing both timing and spatial substitutions it is also found that there exists an inverted u shape relationship between the aggregate optimal gdp and the emission control coefficient which shows that modest emission reduction policy might be more appropriate for china in order to achieve the joint goals of economic development and co2 emission reduction

returns to damage under undesirable congestion and damages to return under desirable congestion measured by dea environmental assessment with multiplier restriction economic and energy planning for social sustainability in china this study discusses the concept of natural and managerial disposability from their economic and methodological implications on social sustainability development then it explores their analytical linkages to a concept on congestion the concept is classified into undesirable congestion uc under natural disposability and desirable congestion dc under managerial disposability considering the two disposability concepts this study compares between returns to damage rtd under uc and damages to return dtr under dc conceptually uc and dc are conceptually different from rtd and dtr although they are closely related to each other group an occurrence of the former measures is identified by a single negative multiplier i e dual variable in contrast the latter measures are associated with multiple negative multipliers and an intercept of a supporting hyperplane on a production and pollution possibility set thus an occurrence of uc and dc is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition on rtd and dtr respectively in terms of the number of negative multipliers on production factors to document the practicality of the proposed approach this study applies it to chinese economic and environmental assessment for its economic and energy planning for social sustainability development this study identifies four important findings first the chinese government has historically paid attention to the economic prosperity but not paying serious attention on the environmental pollution e g air pollution second there was an increasing trend in improving the two components i e economic and environmental performance measures regarding social sustainability third china s economic and energy policy concerns have been focused upon well developed municipalities e g beijing and shanghai and large provinces therefore it is an important strategy for the government to allocate economic and energy resources to other provinces so that china can reduce the industrial and regional imbalances as a result china can enhance the level of social sustainability finally the municipalities need strict regulation on traffic control in these metropolitan areas and a fuel mix shift from coal combustion to natural gas and renewable energies e g solar water and nuclear generations the fuel mix strategy along with the structure change e g from manufacturing to service and from public to private energy firms will be a major industrial policy issue for china in near future

efficiency analysis of hydroelectric generating plants a case study for portugal abstract this paper estimates changes in total productivity breaking this down into technically efficient change and technological change by means of data envelopment analysis dea applied to the hydroelectric energy generating plants of edp the portugal electricity company the aim of this procedure is to seek out those best practices that will lead to improved performance in the energy market we rank the plants according to their change in total productivity for the period 2001 2004 concluding that some plants experienced productivity growth while others experienced a decrease in productivity the implications arising from the study are that edp should adopt an internal benchmark management procedure in order to evaluate the relative position of each hydroelectric generating plant and to adopt managerial strategies designed to catch up with the frontier of best practices as the frontier is shifting along the time constant efforts are needed in this respect along the time

carbon emission performance evaluation and allocation in chinese cities abstract this paper presents a dea approach with multiple abatement factors to evaluate co2 emission performance and allocate co2 emission quotas in chinese cities we first consider the difference of marginal abatement costs among cities and construct the non radial directional distance function with multiple abatement factors the total factor co2 emission performance index and its dynamic change index are then proposed to measure co2 emission performance considering equity and efficiency we develop a composite index by the hybrid method to allocate emissions quota which considers co2 emissions as well as co2 emission performance then we conduct an empirical study using inputs and outputs dataset of 71 chinese cities in 2005 2012 chinese cities have poor energy efficiency and still have high co2 emissions the eastern region outperforms the central region and the western region performs worst whereas the dynamic co2 emission performance of the central region has the largest increase the change of co2 emission performance is driven mainly by technological advances as for the co2 emission allocation the composite index method encourages cities to reduce emissions and enhance emission performance through carbon trading market it also motivates cities with high historical emissions to reduce their emissions by improving technology when they have poor co2 emission performance

a note on foreign investment the savings function and immiserization of national welfare abstract with the help of a simple two country version of the solow steady state model the present note shows that even without the presence of any visible market distortion free mobility of capital is not necessarily beneficial for the capital importing country under a set of very plausible and empirically relevant assumptions about savings behavior this note shows that while perfect mobility will lead to higher long run capital stock income and consumption for the capital exporting country it leads to exactly the opposite outcome for the capital importing country it brings about lower per capita capital stock income and consumption for the capital importing country

a literature study for dea applied to energy and environment abstract this study systematically summarizes previous research efforts on data envelopment analysis dea applied to energy and environment in the past four decades including concepts and methodologies on dea environmental assessment industrial developments are very important for all nations in terms of their economic prosperities a problem is that the development produces various pollutions on air water and other types of contaminations all of which are usually associated with our health problems and climate changes thus it is necessary for us to consider how to make a balance between economic success and pollution mitigation to maintain a high level of social sustainability in the world it is widely considered that dea is one of the methodologies to examine the level of sustainability this study examines a recent research trend on dea applications from 1980s to 2010s nowadays many researchers have paid serious attention on how to combat various difficulties in the areas of energy and environment as a result the number of articles on dea applications on energy and environment has dramatically increased particularly after 2000s however it is true that dea has strengths and drawbacks in the applications therefore it is very important for us to carefully use dea for guiding large policy issues and business strategies such as the global warming and climate change an underlying premise of this study is that technology innovation in engineering and natural science may solve various problems by linking it with political and managerial efforts the use of dea provides a methodological linkage among them so enhancing the practicality in mitigating problems due to climate change and environmental pollutions this literature study along with a summary on conceptual and methodological developments provides us with guidelines for our future research works on dea on energy and environment issues

carbon dioxide emissions allocation a review carbon dioxide co2 emissions allocation plays a fundamental role in determining reduction responsibility at economy level or emission permits at firm level past decades have seen the development and applications of various methods for co2 emissions allocation this paper provides a literature review of co2 emissions allocation with emphasis on the evolution of allocation methods used it begins with a summary of the most popular allocation principles and criteria that lay a foundation for the development of allocation methods we then classify the existing allocation methods into four groups namely indicator optimization game theoretic and hybrid approaches the main features and findings of past studies are identified and summarized while the fairness principle prevails in earlier studies the efficiency principle has been found to receive increasing attention recently we also present a comparison of the empirical results based on ten popular indicator methods to show how indicator choice affects the allocation results issues related to selecting appropriate methods in co2 emissions allocation are finally discussed further research may be carried out to strike a balance between fairness and efficiency so that the allocation results become more widely acceptable and economically feasible

time substitution with application to data envelopment analysis abstract in this paper we analyze resource allocation distinguishing between the decision of when to begin allocation and over how many periods to apply the resources we present analytical results for specific production technologies under different returns to scale assumptions under capacity constraints and for production with technical change using a dynamic activity analysis framework we show how to compute in general optimal solutions for resource intensity use

a metafrontier approach for measuring an environmentally sensitive productivity growth index this paper presents an alternative environmentally sensitive productivity growth index to incorporate group heterogeneities into a conventional malmquist luenberger productivity growth index the p

marginal co2 abatement costs findings from alternative shadow price estimates for shanghai industrial sectors abstract shanghai one of the most developed cities in china is implementing a pilot regional carbon emission trading scheme estimating the marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions for the industrial sectors covered in shanghai s emission trading scheme provides the government and participating firms useful information for devising compliance policies this paper employs multiple distance function approaches to estimating the shadow prices of co2 emissions for shanghai industrial sectors our empirical results show that the overall weighted average of shadow price estimates by different approaches ranges between 394 5 and 1906 1 yuan ton which indicates that model choice truly has a significant effect on the shadow price estimation we have also identified a negative relationship between the shadow price of co2 emissions and carbon intensity and the heavy industries with higher carbon intensities tend to have lower shadow prices it has been suggested that shanghai municipal government take various measures to improve its carbon market e g using the marginal abatement costs of participating sectors firms as a criterion in the initial allocation of carbon emission allowances

north south trade and capital flows in a ricardian model of accumulation abstract a class based asymmetric general equilibrium model of the world economy is developed to trace the trajectory of the north south terms of trade the world profit rate the northern real wage and the level of southern employment in the presence of capital accumulation and technical progress it is shown that i accumulation must be accompanied by a continuing deterioration in the terms of trade of the south and may entail a cumulative contraction in its level of employment and ii technical progress in the south will of necessity produce a long run worsening of its terms of trade and assuming world demand for southern goods is priceinelastic of its level of unemployment

international capital transfers and the choice of production technique a simple two country model abstract a two country two factor two good world with incomplete specialization is explored in the context of international capital transfers where the techniques of production of the same good differ across sectors of the world economy it is shown that the terms of trade for the south will worsen with a capital transfer to the south under a wide range of assumptions about the nature of the technology used in the north owned sector of the south the implied redistribution of world income as well as the implications of a change in the production technique of the foreign owned sector of the south are then examined

north south trade and southern industrialization abstract this paper presents a simple model of international trade and growth between a mature industrial region the north and a semi industrial primary exporting region the south under capital autarky per capita southern industrial output is minimized if the north is at the golden rule point regardless of whether capital is internationally mobile northern transfers to the south will not necessarily raise southern industrial output unless they reach a critical level additional transfers may crowd northern private investment in the south out if this critical level is not attained the effects of changes in saving behavior and technical progress are also studied

weak and strong disposability vs natural and managerial disposability in dea environmental assessment comparison between japanese electric power industry and manufacturing industries the economic concept of weak and strong disposability has long dominated studies on dea data envelopment analysis environmental assessment this study reviews the two disposability concepts from their conceptual and methodological implications in particular this study is interested in the concept of weak disposability because the concept is believed to have an analytical capability to measure an occurrence of congestion the two economic concepts on disposability accepted by production economists are replaced by natural and managerial disposability in this study the natural disposability implies an environmental strategy by which a firm attempts to decrease an input vector to reduce a vector of undesirable outputs given the decreased input vector a firm attempts to increase a vector of desirable outputs as much as possible this type of strategy indicates negative adaptation in contrast the managerial disposability indicates an opposite strategy by increasing the input vector this disposability expresses an environmental strategy by which a firm considers a regulation change as a new business opportunity a firm attempts to improve its unified performance by utilizing new clean air technology and or new management the strategy indicates positive adaptation considering the two groups of disposability this study compares between weak strong disposability and natural managerial disposability in terms of their conceptual and methodological differences focusing upon the concept of congestion and technology innovation furthermore using the concept of natural and managerial disposability this study compares japanese electric power firms with manufacturing firms this study finds that the manufacturing firms outperform the electric power firms under natural disposability an opposite result is found under managerial disposability this empirical study also finds that the two groups of japanese firms have attained desirable good congestion due to technology innovation based upon such empirical results this study identifies two policy implications one of the two implications is that the two groups of japanese industries have attained a high level of technology innovation by a result of environmental regulation the other is that the electric power industry operates more efficiently to reduce the co2 emission than the manufacturing industries

valuing environmental and health risk in agriculture a choice experiment approach to pesticides in italy abstract the widespread use of pesticides in agriculture shows a complex ramification of multiple negative externalities ranging from food safety related effects to the deterioration of farmland ecosystems recent research has demonstrated that the assessment of the economic implications of such negative processes is fraught with many uncertainties this paper presents the results of an empirical study recently conducted in northern italy aimed at estimating the economic value of reducing the wide ranging impacts of pesticide use by deploying a choice experiment approach the experimental design provides a meaningful tool to assign monetary values to the negative environmental effects associated with agrochemicals use in this connection the paper addresses in particular the reduction of farmland biodiversity groundwater contamination and harm to human health the resulting estimates confirm that on average respondents demonstrate a substantial willingness to pay a premium for agricultural goods in particular foodstuffs produced in environmentally benign ways

comparison of technology efficiency for co2 emissions reduction among european countries based on dea with decomposed factors abstract for consistent and effective co 2 reduction many countries need to improve not only the technical efficiency of co 2 mitigation but also environmental responsibility in this study we examine both the technical efficiency and voluntary environmental consciousness vec of 12 european countries using a two stage data envelopment analysis dea in the first stage we measured the technical efficiency of green energy technologies get associated with fossil fuels renewable energy and storage technologies of each country for energy generation with regard to co 2 emissions by surveying get related patents using the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi we decomposed co 2 emissions into the following technological factors energy intensity fuel mix and co 2 emission coefficient in the second stage we quantified the vec in each country by investigating get patent changes via research and development r d investment at given changes in co 2 emissions the results show different aspects for each country in terms of technical efficiency and vec suggesting potential levels of both efficient co 2 reductions and desirable get development by using reference countries as a benchmark our study methodology and results can contribute to establishing effective national technology policy and aid in calls for common responsibility and the active participation of nations in addressing climate change

regional allocation of co2 emissions allowance over provinces in china by 2020 the mitigation efforts of china are increasingly important for meeting global climate target since the rapid economic growth of china has led to an increasing share in the world s total co2 emissions this paper sets out to explore the approach for realizing china s national mitigation targets submitted to the unfccc as part of the copenhagen accord that is to reduce the intensity of co2 emissions per unit of gdp by 40 45 by 2020 as well as reducing the energy intensity and increasing the share of non fossil fuel consumption through regional allocation of emission allowance over china s provinces since the realization of china s mitigation target essentially represents a total amount emission allowance allocation problem an improved zero sum gains data envelopment analysis optimization model which could deal with the constant total amount resources allocation is proposed in this study by utilizing this model and based on several scenarios of china s economic growth co2 emissions and energy consumption a new efficient emission allowance allocation scheme on provincial level for china by 2020 is proposed the allocation results indicate that different provinces have to shoulder different mitigation burdens in terms of emission intensity reduction energy intensity reduction and share of non fossil fuels increase

energy savings potential in china s industrial sector from the perspectives of factor price distortion and allocative inefficiency abstract china s industrial energy consumption accounted for 70 82 of national and 14 12 of world energy usage in 2011 in the context of energy scarcity and environmental pollution the industrial sector in china faces unsustainable growth problems by adopting the stochastic frontier analysis sfa framework this paper analyzes the factor allocative efficiency of china s industrial sector and estimates the energy savings potential from the perspective of allocative inefficiency this paper focuses on three issues the first is examining the factor allocative inefficiency of china s industrial sector the second is measuring factor price distortion by the shadow price model the third is estimating the energy savings potential in china s industrial sector during 2001 2009 major conclusions are thus drawn first factor prices of capital labor and energy are distorted in china due to government regulations moreover energy price is relatively low compared to capital price while is relatively high compared to labor price second the industry wide energy savings potential resulted from energy allocative inefficiency was about 9 71 during 2001 2009 the downward trend of energy savings potential implies the increasing energy allocative efficiency in china s industrial sector third a transparent and reasonable pricing mechanism is conducive to improving energy allocative efficiency

environmental assessment by dea radial measurement u s coal fired power plants in iso independent system operator and rto regional transmission organization abstract the economic concept of weak and strong disposability on undesirable outputs dominated the previous discussions on dea data envelopment analysis radial measurement for environmental assessment this study reexamines the economic concept from the perspective of corporate strategies on how to adapt a regulation change on undesirable outputs the economic concept of disposability conventionally accepted by production economists is replaced by natural and managerial disposability in this study the natural disposability implies an environmental strategy that a firm attempts to decrease an input vector to reduce a vector of undesirable outputs given the decreased input vector the firm attempts to increase a vector of desirable outputs as much as possible this type of strategy indicates negative adaptation meanwhile the managerial disposability indicates an opposite strategy by increasing the input vector this disposability expresses an environmental strategy by which a firm considers a regulation change on undesirable outputs as a new business opportunity a firm attempts to improve its unified operational and environmental performance by utilizing new technology and or new management the strategy indicates positive adaptation considering the two types of disposability this study discusses how to measure unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability by dea radial models to document the practicality of the proposed dea environmental assessment this study applies it to compare the performance of u s coal fired power plants under isos rtos independent system operators regional transmission organizations with that of the other power plants not belonging to any organization this study identifies two empirical findings one of the two findings is that the latter coal fired power plants outperform the former power plants belonging to isos rtos in terms of three efficiency measures this result indicates that isos and rtos do not provide an effective coordination for coal fired power plants at the level that can be found in the other power plants the other finding is that there is technological improvement in the operation of coal fired power plants

efficiency productivity and environmental policy a case study of power generation in the eu this study uses the eu public power generating sector as a case study to investigate the environmental efficiency and productivity enhancing performance of the european union s co2 emissions trading scheme eu ets in its first phase using data envelopment analysis methods we measure the environmental efficiency and the productivity growth registered in public power generation across the eu over the 1996 2007 period in the second stage of our analysis we attempt to explain changes in productivity and efficiency over time using econometric techniques our analysis suggests two conclusions carbon pricing led to an increase in environmental efficiency and to a shift outwards of the technological frontier and the overly generous allocation of emission permits had a negative impact on both measures these results are shown to be robust to changes in controls and specifications

environmental value transfer state of the art and future prospects abstract the main objectives of the paper are to 1 give an overview of the state of the art of environmental value transfer 2 discuss its prospects and potential role in cba as a decision support tool and 3 provide further guidelines for proper use and application environmental value or benefit transfer is a technique in which the results of studies on monetary environmental valuation are applied to new policy contexts the technique is controversial not least because of academic and political reservations over the usefulness and technical feasibility of economic valuation tools to demonstrate the importance of environmental values in project or programme appraisals testing of environmental value transfer so far has been unable to validate the practice taking into account the conditions set out in the literature for valid and reliable value transfer most transfers appear to result in substantial transfer errors this paper discusses why and addresses the question of which factors may have been overlooked it is argued that the problem is much more fundamental than previously acknowledged strict guidelines in terms of quantitative adjustment mechanisms to valid value transfer are meaningless if the more fundamental issue of differences in the very nature of the values elicited is not addressed at the same time

pesticide taxation and multi objective policy making farm modelling to evaluate profit environment trade offs abstract many countries in western europe have introduced voluntary programmes to encourage farmers to adopt environmentally more benign practices such as integrated pest management but more policy action appears to be needed to meet the environmental quality levels now demanded input taxes could assist in meeting policy objectives the issue considered here is the identification of the most appropriate specification of a tax instrument to reduce the environmental problems of agricultural pesticide usage this paper takes a farm systems approach to evaluation a case study illustration is given for a specialist arable farm in the uk combining an economic model of land use and production with a set of environmental indicators for pesticides linking these two components allows the identification of the potential trade offs between achieving reductions in the environmental burden to a number of ecological dimensions and farm income different pesticide tax specifications vary in both the magnitude and the direction of their impacts the results of the model indicate that either compromises will have to be made in environmental policy or additional instruments will be required to counter act the negative side effects of some instruments

estimating the shadow prices of so2 and nox for u s coal power plants a convex nonparametric least squares approach abstract weak disposability between outputs and pollutants defined as a simultaneous proportional reduction of both outputs and pollutants assumes that pollutants are byproducts of the output generation process and that a firm can freely dispose of both by scaling down production levels leaving some inputs idle based on the production axioms of monotonicity convexity and weak disposability we formulate a convex nonparametric least squares cnls quadratic optimization problem to estimate a frontier production function assuming either a deterministic disturbance term consisting only of inefficiency or a composite disturbance term composed of both inefficiency and noise the suggested methodology extends the stochastic semi nonparametric envelopment of data stoned described in kuosmanen and kortelainen 2011 applying the method to estimate the shadow prices of so 2 and no x generated by u s coal power plants we conclude that the weak disposability stoned method provides more consistent estimates of market prices

assessing co2 emissions in china s commercial sector determinants and reduction strategies abstract the commercial sector is one of the key sectors in china s economic transformation and carbon emissions control this paper applies var and stirpat models to investigate the major influencing factors of co 2 emissions in china s commercial sector over the period 1980 2014 according to the empirical results per capita gdp urbanization and energy structure have positive effects on co 2 emissions while energy intensity has negative effect on co 2 emissions in the long term besides per capita gdp ranks as the most important driving factors of co 2 in china s commercial sector followed by urbanization energy structure and energy intensity in that order this paper argues that reducing energy intensity and improving energy structure are the means to realize co 2 emission reductions in the commercial sector in the short and long term respectively besides this paper forecasts that co 2 emissions in china s commercial sector will be 1942 mt by 2030 which is huge and about half of the co 2 emissions of the european union in 2014 the findings have important implications for policy makers to enact co 2 emission reduction policies

impact of bt cotton on pesticide poisoning in smallholder agriculture a panel data analysis while substantial research on the productivity and profit effects of bt cotton has been carried out recently the economic evaluation of positive and negative externalities has received much less attention here we focus on farmer health impacts resulting from bt related changes in chemical pesticide use previous studies have documented that bt cotton has reduced the problem of pesticide poisoning in developing countries but they have failed to account for unobserved heterogeneity between technology adopters and non adopters we use unique panel survey data from india to estimate unbiased effects and their developments over time bt cotton has reduced pesticide applications by 50 with the largest reductions of 70 occurring in the most toxic types of chemicals results of fixed effects poisson models confirm that bt has notably reduced the incidence of acute pesticide poisoning among cotton growers these effects have become more pronounced with increasing technology adoption rates bt cotton now helps to avoid several million cases of pesticide poisoning in india every year which also entails sizeable health cost savings

farmer risk assessment for voluntary insecticide reduction abstract we develop a theoretical basis for voluntary reduction in insecticide use and quantify the subjective value farmers place on reducing environmental risk the indirect utility model is used to quantify the acceptable financial cost of eliminating one insecticide application in return for avoidance of moderate risk to the environment the mean valuation in illinois iowa nebraska and ohio usa is 8 25 per acre acceptable yield loss increases with importance of environmental goods with formal education and with farming experience valuation increases with total expenditure on insecticides up to 89 per acre decomposition of the tobit model used in estimation indicates that voluntary programs should target intensification rather than extensification of participation to maximize effectiveness

a comprehensive review of data envelopment analysis dea approach in energy efficiency the main aim of this review article is to review of dea models in regarding to energy efficiency this paper reviewed and summarized the different models of dea that have been applied around the world to development of energy efficiency problems consequently a review of 144 published scholarly papers appearing in 45 high ranking journals between 2006 and 2015 have been obtained to achieve a comprehensive review of dea application in energy efficiency accordingly the selected articles have been categorized based on year of publication author s nationalities scope of study time duration application area study purpose results and outcomes results of this review paper indicated that dea showed great promise to be a good evaluative tool for future analysis on energy efficiency issues where the production function between the inputs and outputs was virtually absent or extremely difficult to acquire

malmquist index measurement for sustainability enhancement in chinese municipalities and provinces abstract this study discusses a use of dea environmental assessment in a time horizon we use a radial approach to examine a dynamic change of index measures related to china s regional development and industrial pollution prevention in applying the proposed assessment to a time series data we need to examine components that produce a shift of an efficiency frontier in a time horizon a unique feature of the proposed assessment is that it incorporates a framework of malmquist index to examine the frontier shift among multiple periods here the frontier shift indicates a progress potential on technology development and or managerial improvement among observed periods thus it is not an efficiency measure rather the measurement eliminates inefficiency by shifting an organization to an efficiency frontier in this study the index is conceptually separated into 6 subcomponents which are further disaggregated into 12 different elements 6 subcomponents 2 disposability concepts under natural and managerial disposability concepts the proposed index measurement needs to consider a possible occurrence of a frontier crossover among different periods because technology diffusion on production activities usually has a time lag until it becomes really effective methodologically this study conveys the message that dea is an approximation method so being not perfect therefore it is necessary for us to use several different approaches e g potential improvement by measuring a frontier shift and efficiency analysis to obtain reliable empirical evidence as an application this study examines the level of sustainability related to 30 municipalities and provinces in china from 2003 to 2014 the following six policy implications are obtained in this study first all municipalities and provinces have made a considerable progress on their economies and pollution prevention efforts second the effect of the frontier crossover is limited in china because they attain a high level of their potentials on economic development and pollution prevention of course this effort is within the chinese boundary not international because this study does not compare them with other industrial nations third china needs to allocate its resources to western provinces at a level that it has used for coastal developments fourth the government should reinforce efforts on environmental protection in central and southern regions fifth the government has focused on the sustainability development in urban municipalities and provinces and then has gradually shifted the policy influence toward rural areas finally different empirical results are confirmed by the potential analysis which consists of the malmquist index measurement and the efficiency analysis both approaches need to be examined for future planning on chinese regional development

is the lithuanian economy approaching the goals of sustainable energy and climate change mitigation evidence from dea based environmental performance index abstract even though lithuania has seen extensive social and political transformations there is still a gap in the literature on environmental performance of lithuanian economy specifically the environmental pressures stemming from economic activities have never been analysed in lines with the principles of production economics this paper therefore aims to estimate the environmental performance index epi for lithuanian economic sectors the paper presents the underlying trends in greenhouse gas emissions in lithuania the environmental performance index is estimated by employing the data envelopment analysis in the spirit of the hicks moorsteen indices the present analysis is based on the data from the world input output database specifically the environmental technology is defined in terms of the value added carbon and nitrous oxide emissions labour capital and energy results of the analysis imply that the analysed economic sectors can be grouped into the four clusters with respect to the mean epi and its rate of growth pulp paper and agricultural sectors fall into the best performing group featuring the highest mean epi and the highest growth rate petroleum production and air transport sectors are those featuring the lowest environmental performance therefore the latter sectors should be given an especial importance when developing strategies for increase in sustainability

the validity of environmental benefits transfer further empirical testing this paper provides further empirical evidence of the validity of environmental benefits transfer based on cv studies by expanding the analysis to include control factors which have not been accounted for in previous studies these factors refer to differences in respondent attitudes traditional population characteristics were taken into account but these variables do not explain why respondents from the same socio economic group may still hold different beliefs norms or values and hence have different attitudes and consequently state different wtp amounts the test results are mixed the function transfer approach is valid in one case but is rejected in the 3 other cases investigated in this paper we provide further evidence that in the case of statistically valid benefits transfer the function approach results in a more robust benefits transfer than the unit value approach we also show that the equality of coefficient estimates is a necessary but insufficient condition for valid benefit function transfer and discuss the implications for previous and future validity testing

pesticide residue risk and food safety valuation a random utility approach a new approach is developed for integrating consumers risk perceptions with stated purchase behavior when consumption decisions must be made with incomplete information the application involves health risks from exposure to pesticide residues on fresh produce unlike traditional food demand analysis the present approach treats produce choices as discrete outcomes resulting in a random utility model empirical results from a pilot survey suggest a clear linkage between perceptions and behavior in response to new risk information consumers stated preferences for safer produce were primarily influenced by price differences and perceived risks not by the technical risk information provided alone however the linkage between behavior and valuation was less clear cut the risk price tradeoffs entailed by contingent discrete choices indicate high price premia for small risk reductions and little variation in price premium across alternative risk reductions

pesticides productivity and farmer health a philippine case study health is recognized as one of the most important components of the human capital of rural people in developing countries there is a growing body of literature showing the productivity effects of health associated with nutrition e g bliss and stern 1978 strauss 1986 deolalikar 1988 pitt rosenzweig and hassan 1990 in this literature the productivity effects of health are inferred either by correlating health indicators with wages or by including health indicators in an agricultural production function the human capital literature also has demonstrated that farmer education plays an important role in the allocative and technical efficiency of farmers welch 1970 schultz 1975

a critique of non parametric efficiency analysis in energy economics studies abstract the paper reexamines non additive environmental efficiency models with weakly disposable undesirable outputs appeared in the literature of energy economics these efficiency models are used in numerous studies published in this journal and other energy related outlets recent studies however have found key limitations of the weak disposability assumption in its application to environmental efficiency analysis it is found that efficiency scores obtained from non additive efficiency models can be non monotonic in pollution quantities under the weak disposability assumption which is against common intuition and the principle of environmental economics in this paper i present taxonomy of efficiency models found in the energy economics literature and illustrate the above limitations and discuss implications of monotonicity from a practical viewpoint finally i review the formulations for a variable returns to scale technology with weakly disposable undesirable outputs which has been misused in a number of papers in the energy economics literature an application to evaluating the energy efficiencies of 23 european union states is presented to illustrate the problem

impact of factor price distortions on energy efficiency evidence from provincial level panel data in china abstract the marketization of energy price is not only an important part of factor pricing reforms but also decisive for energy efficiency improvement thus this study aims to measure factor price distortions and estimate their impact on energy efficiency based on an empirical analysis of 30 provinces of china during 2004 2013 using the stochastic frontier analysis framework results yielded three important findings 1 technical efficiency was the highest in eastern china which still remains low at around 0 7980 followed by central china and western china and there were growing gaps among the above areas 2 capital price was relatively high while energy price was relatively low compared with labor price and the relative allocative efficiency of energy got worse over time 3 energy efficiency loss among the three regions showed convergence trends policy implications are summarized as follows 1 measures such as adjusting energy consumption structure and improving production technology and management levels can reverse the trend of declining technical efficiency 2 the process of energy price marketization needs to be accelerated 3 it is necessary to expand the depth and breadth of regional technology diffusion and break the barriers of technology transfer among regions in china

valuing financial health and environmental benefits of bt cotton in pakistan data from a farm survey and choice experiment are used to value the benefits of bt cotton in pakistan unlike previous research on the economic impacts of bt which mostly concentrated on financial benefits in terms of gross margins we also quantify and monetize positive externalities associated with technology adoption due to lower chemical pesticide use on bt cotton plots there are significant health advantages in terms of reduced incidence of acute pesticide poisoning and environmental advantages in terms of higher biodiversity and lower soil and groundwater contamination these positive externalities are valued at us 79 per acre of which half is attributable to health and the other half to environmental improvements adding average gross margin gains of us 204 results in an aggregate benefit of us 283 per acre of bt or us 1 7 billion for the total bt cotton area in pakistan

pesticide risk valuation in empirical economics a comparative approach abstract pesticide use in agriculture poses several risks to both human health and nontarget agro ecosystems due to lack of information on the monetary value of reducing pesticide risks it is difficult to perform an economic analysis that addresses social efficiency of policy and draws conclusions about the appropriate degree of regulation the aim of the current paper is to present a critical overview of the empirical literature on pesticide risk valuation that provides disaggregate willingness to pay estimates wtps of pesticide risks reduction recent multidimensional classification methods such as coined decision tree analysis are used in a comparative approach as tools for explaining the differences in empirical research findings the analysis shows that the order of magnitude of wtps is related to both the valuation technique and to the data available from biomedical and ecotoxicological literature it also shows that wtp estimates of pesticide risks cannot be simply averaged over several empirical studies the order of magnitude of a wtp estimate is in fact related to the specific type of risk and to the nature of the risk scenario considered as well to lay people s subjective perception of risks

environmental productivity and kuznets curve in india abstract as a result of india s extremely rapid economic growth the scale and seriousness of environmental problems are no longer in doubt whether pollution abatement technologies are utilized more efficiently is crucial in the analysis of environmental management because it influences the cost of alternative production and pollution abatement technologies in this study we use state level industry data of sulfur dioxide nitrogen dioxide and suspended particular matter over the period 1991 2003 employing recently developed productivity measurement technique we show that overall environmental productivities decrease over time in india furthermore we analyze the determinants of environmental productivities and find environmental kuznets curve type relationship existences between environmental productivity and income panel analysis results show that the scale effect dominates over the technique effect therefore a combined effect of income on environmental productivity is negative

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

measuring total factor co2 emission performance and technology gaps using a non radial directional distance function a modified approach implementing the common but differentiated responsibilities principle for co2 mitigation requires an understanding of co2 emission performance and technology gaps in different countries this paper uses a meta frontier and non radial directional distance function to propose an alternative three stage approach to measure total factor co2 emission performance and technology gaps the first stage calculates the co2 emission performance of the group frontier the second stage uses these results to calculate the technology gap ratio the third stage integrates data from the first two stages to calculate co2 emission performance under the meta frontier this approach is easier to apply than other approaches in the literature and effectively avoids the phenomenon of the technology gap ratio being greater than unity the proposed approach can also decompose co2 emission performance loss into two categories management inefficiency and technical gaps to demonstrate the method an empirical analysis using data for 54 countries was conducted the study highlighted three main findings first upper middle income countries did not perform as well as high income countries and lower middle income countries second high income countries generally enjoy optimized production technology whereas the lower middle income countries generally had the lowest technological levels third both management inefficiency and technical gaps negatively impacted co2 emission performance but management inefficiency played a dominant role

dynamic change in energy and co2 performance of china s commercial sector a regional comparative study abstract energy and co2 efficiency play important roles in promoting energy conservation and co2 emission reduction in china s commercial sector this paper applies the non radial directional distance function to evaluate energy and co2 efficiency in china s commercial sector and also constructs a non radial malmquist energy and co2 performance index to measure the dynamic performance of energy and co2 efficiency in the sector the results indicate that energy and co2 efficiency in china s commercial sector is generally low and there are significant regional differences and enormous energy savings and co2 emission reduction potentials eastern china has the highest energy and co2 efficiency of all the regions from the perspective of dynamic performance energy and co2 efficiency performance in china s commercial sector improved by 3 8 annually over the period 1995 2015 technological progress is the major driving factor improving energy and co2 efficiency in the sector the technology gap changes tgc index which is less than 1 implies that the technological gap between the global frontier and the intertemporal frontier has increased and does not help to improve energy and co2 efficiency performance considering regional differences policy makers should set both short and long term goals to achieve environmental goals in china s commercial sector

estimation and allocation of cost savings from collaborative co2 abatement in china abstract as an increasingly accepted way of relieving global warming collaborative carbon dioxide co2 abatement could improve not only emission performance but also cost effectiveness of abatement in this study we analyze the cost savings and benefits of collaborative abatement in the context of china by using data envelopment analysis dea approach specifically we establish 63 collaborative abatement scenarios by dividing the mainland china into six main regions and then estimate the costs savings in each collaboration abatement scenario through investigating the gains for each region in various scenarios the best collaborative partners for each region are suggested from perspectives of benefit maximization furthermore the contribution of each region to collaborative abatement cost saving is also differentiated with the shapley value approach

capital mobility and growth in a north south model abstract the paper introduces international equalization of profit rates into a north south model of growth a la findlay 1980 it examines the effects on north south income and employment differentials of the introduction of international capital mobility and given such mobility of shifts in regional technology savings and demand parameters the postulated structural asymmetries between the north and the south are shown to act in such a way as to pervasively bias against the south the functioning of the world economy

environmental cost benefit analysis of alternative timing strategies in greenhouse gas abatement a data envelopment analysis approach assessing the benefits of climate policies is complicated due to ancillary benefits abatement of greenhouse gases also reduces local air pollution the timing of the abatement measures influences both the economic costs and ancillary benefits this paper conducts efficiency analysis of ten alternative timing strategies taking into account the ancillary benefits we apply the approach by kuosmanen and kortelainen valuing environmental factors in cost benefit analysis using data envelopment analysis ecological economics 62 2007 56 65 which does not require prior valuation of the environmental impacts the assessment is based on synthetic data from a dynamic applied general equilibrium model calibrated to the netherlands our assessment shows that if one is only interested in ghg abatement at the lowest economic cost then equal reduction of ghgs over time is preferred if society is willing to pay a premium for higher ancillary benefits an early mid intensive reduction strategy is optimal

new developments in trade theory and ldcs abstract this paper surveys the new literature on international trade relevant to the north south controversy in the first part two types of north south models are considered the unequal exchange theory of lewis and emmanuel and the models of dynamic interaction of findlay taylor and others the analysis focuses on the determinants of growth the terms of trade and relative employment in the world economy in the second part the paper reviews the empirical literature on south north and south south trade and the theories of north south technological gaps intra industry trade and external economies finally we analyze the literature on exports and economic growth and the neo classical keynesian and disequilibrium approaches to the theory of import controls

metafroniter energy efficiency with co2 emissions and its convergence analysis for china this paper measures the energy efficiency performance with carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 30 provinces in china during the period of 1997 2011 using a meta frontier framework with the improved directional distance function ddf we construct a new environmental production possibility set by combining the super efficiency and sequential data envelopment analysis dea models to avoid discriminating power problem and technical regress when evaluating efficiency by ddf then it is used in a meta frontier framework to reflect the technology heterogeneities across east central and west china the results indicate that eastern china achieved the highest progress inefficiency relative to the metafrontier followed by western and the central china by focusing on technology gaps we offer some suggestions for the different groups based on group frontier and meta frontier analyses the inefficiency can be attributed to managerial failure for eastern and western china and technological differences for central china the convergence analysis shows that energy and co2 emission governance will produce negative effects on economic growth and it is suitable and acceptable to introduce rigorous environmental measures in eastern china

measuring environmentally sensitive productivity growth an application to the urban water sector the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in the provision of urban water and sewerage services have become an increasingly important issue in recent times however the impact of negative externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions on the productivity of urban water provision has received less attention in the literature this paper applies the global malmquist luenberger gml productivity index which accounts for undesirable outputs in order to evaluate the productivity trends in the australian urban water sector results indicate that the inclusion of greenhouse gas emissions significantly influences the productivity measurement findings also indicate that the conventional index which disregards undesirable outputs over states the productivity growth despite a declining trend in greenhouse emissions over the period the overall productivity trend of the urban water sector experienced a downward trend while accounting for bad output this productivity decline occurs in a period of prolonged drought water security concerns and increased reliance on desalinization and water recycling

social sustainability measured by intermediate approach for dea environmental assessment chinese regional planning for economic development and pollution prevention abstract this study examines the level of simultaneous achievement on economic prosperity and environmental protection so measuring the level of sustainability by a newly proposed intermediate approach conventionally dea data envelopment analysis for performance evaluation was used to assess various economic activities of organizations that utilized inputs e g the number of employees to yield desirable outputs e g the number of products the methodology was usually classified into radial or non radial category in an effort of extending it to environmental assessment dea needs to incorporate undesirable outputs e g the amount of co 2 into the computational framework this type of assessment is referred to as dea environmental assessment the proposed intermediate approach develops a new type of dea environmental assessment by combining the analytical features of radial approach with those of non radial approach the new approach measures the level of unified inefficiency on each production factor and determines the level of total unified inefficiency from the average of the sum of these inefficiency scores a rank sum test and a mean test are additionally incorporated into the proposed intermediate approach such a combination enhances the statistical capability as an application this study examines the level of sustainability related to 30 provinces in china from 2003 to 2014 the application finds four policy implications first it is important for china to allocate its resources to western provinces at a level that it has used for coastal developments second the government continues to reinforce the policy making effort on environmental protection by paying attention to central and southern regions the chinese industries need to transfer toward green energy the transfer should be efficiently executed for their future developments third the government has focused on the sustainability development in urban provinces and then has gradually shifted the policy influence toward rural areas finally the policy implementation needs a time lag until it becomes effective the time lag on economic policy is longer than that of environmental policy the economic policy has historically produced a regional imbalance often leading to educational and income imbalances among chinese provinces

trade accumulation and uneven development abstract this paper develops a two country model of capital accumulation and growth where the industrial sector exhibits increasing returns to scale it shows that uneven development is a necessary outcome in such a model an initial discrepancy in capital labor ratios between the two countries will cumulate over time leading to the division of the world into a capital rich industrial region and capital poor agricultural region which region takes on which role depends on primative accumulation that is on which region starts with more capital if capital is mobile internationally the model can given rise to a two stage pattern of development a first stage where trade is the engine of growth in the leading country and a second in which foreign investment takes on that role which is reminiscent of the hobson lenin theory of imperialism