estimating sectoral and geographical industrial pollution inventories in india implications for using effluent charge versus regulation developing countries are increasingly concerned about the growing pollution levels in cities because of the lack of reliable information on the nature and magnitude of emissions discharges from various industrial sources it is difficult for regulators to formulate cost effective strategies for industrial pollution control this article uses the industrial pollution projection system database to estimate the industrial pollution load and the associated abatement cost which can be used to design cost effective strategies for pollution control the article also illustrates the cost effectiveness of market based instruments such as effluent charge vis a vis regulation

carbon efficiency and carbon abatement costs of coal fired power enterprises a case of shanghai china abstract in this paper we adopt a non radial directional distance function to analyze the efficiency and shadow price of co2 emissions of coal fired power plants using a sample of shanghai s 20 coal fired power plants we find that the efficiency performance of power plants remained steady during the period 2007 2010 on average the carbon abatement costs of shanghai s power plants increased from 20 58 yuan ton to 39 67 yuan ton during 2007 2010 although the average shadow price of the power plants increased during the period the price was still well below shadow prices for the energy consumption of the industries and a little lower than the trading price in the ets markets in addition the paper discusses the implications of the findings

forward looking assessment of the ghg abatement cost application to china abstract evaluation of abatement costs is critical in setting reduction goals and devising climate policy however reliable forward looking assessment of the short term effects of climate policy remains a major challenge using panel data of 30 chinese provinces during 1997 2015 we first estimate the marginal co2 abatement costs using a novel data driven approach convex quantile regression based on the marginal abatement cost estimates and china s plans regarding carbon intensity reduction and economic growth we present a forward looking assessment of the abatement costs for chinese provinces for 2016 2020 our main finding is that all the chinese provinces have a negative abatement cost which means these provinces can benefit from an increase in the absolute level of co2 emissions despite the constraint on carbon intensity the magnitudes of economic benefits exhibit a significant regional disparity because some provinces can increase more co2 emissions than others however there is still costly carbon intensity abatement relative to a counterfactual where the provinces meet their economic growth targets but in the absence of the intensity reduction constraints policy implications have been proposed to enhance the efficiency and fairness of climate policy in china

the price of pollution a dual approach to valuing so2 allowances under the 1990 clean air act amendments a market based scheme to reduce u s sulfur dioxide emissions takes effect in 1995 indications are that participation in the market will be light and allowance prices will be lower than was once expected using an output distance function approach for wisconsin coal burning utility plants we estimate the shadow price of so2abatement which should approximate the allowance price the estimated average shadow price is above the prices at which the few observed allowance trades have occurred wisconsin s stringent state so2legislation may explain a portion of this divergence

the low carbon technology characteristics of china s ferrous metal industry abstract the ferrous metal industry is the largest energy consuming industrial sector in china this paper examines the low carbon production characteristics of this industry during the period 1980 2013 we employ the duality theory of the weighted russell directional distance function to propose a general procedure for modeling production characteristics with carbon emissions being considered the undesirable output using the weighted russell directional distance function model we measure the carbon adjusted technical efficiency and environmental regulatory costs for this industry to investigate policy effects we test the porter hypothesis using the granger causality between regulatory cost and technical efficiency by using the dual model of weighted russell directional distance function we estimate the carbon shadow pricing and inter factor substitution possibilities results show that the carbon adjusted technical efficiency and environmental regulation costs of the chinese ferrous metal industry have significantly increased in recent decades however the latter does not significantly cause the improvement of former the indirect morishima elasticities of substitution reflect that the increase of fixed assets will effectively improve the carbon emissions performance of the chinese ferrous metal industry finally some policy implications are suggested

time series forecasts of international travel demand for australia abstract this paper analyses stationary and non stationary international tourism time series data by formally testing for the presence of unit roots and seasonal unit roots prior to estimation model selection and forecasting various box jenkins autoregressive integrated moving average arima models are estimated over the period 1975 1 1989 4 for tourist arrivals to australia from hong kong malaysia and singapore the mean absolute percentage error and root mean squared error rmse are used as measures of forecast accuracy as the best fitting arima model is found to have the lowest rmse this model is used to obtain post sample forecasts tourist arrivals data for 1990 1 1996 4 are compared with the forecast performance of the arima model for each origin market the fitted arima model forecasts tourist arrivals from singapore for the period 1990 1 1996 4 very well although the arima model outperforms the seasonal arima models for hong kong and malaysia the forecasts of tourist arrivals are not as accurate as in the case of singapore

environmental regulations and industrial competitiveness evidence from china economic activities are closely related to real world environmental issues currently more attention is paid to the association between environmental regulations and industrial competitiveness ic because of pressures on economic development and environmental protection in this study we identify and explain the association between environmental regulations and ic in china as the largest developing country in the world china has the unavoidable responsibility of protecting the environment and promoting global economic development we analyse the mechanisms behind environmental regulations and industrial competiveness at the provincial level and conclude that the impact of environmental regulations upon ic is not a simple linear one but a u shaped relationship it is argued that the crucial intervention to activate the u shaped relationship or porter s hypothesis is innovation which can be triggered by stringent regulations and well designed policies

the impact and economic cost of environmental regulation on energy utilization in china this article utilizes three data envelopment analysis based models a no environmental regulation model a weak environmental regulation model and a strong environmental regulation model to reveal the impact of environmental regulation on china s regional total factor energy efficiency tfee during the period of 2003 2010 to take a further step these three models are adjusted for calculating the correspondingly macro economic cost of environmental regulation the estimation results show that at present the level of china s environmental regulation is relatively low and an enhancing of environmental regulation would lead to a sufficient increase of china s regional tfee with an enormous economic cost as its price that means in china the nationwide environmental stress is high and the regulation cost is very huge strengthening environmental regulation would inevitably have some negative influences on china s economy in the short run based on our findings some corresponding policies are also propo

directional shadow price estimation of co2 so2 and nox in the united states coal power industry 1990 2010 abstract shadow prices also termed marginal abatement costs provide valuable guidelines to support environmental regulatory policies for co 2 so 2 and no x the key contributors to climate change this paper complements the existing models and describes a directional marginal productivity dmp approach to estimate directional shadow prices dsps which present substitutability among three emissions and are jointly estimated we apply the method to a case study of co 2 so 2 and no x produced by coal power plants operating between 1990 and 2010 in the united states we find that dsp shows 1 1 times the maximal shadow prices estimated in the current literature we conclude that estimating the shadow prices of each by product separately may lead to an overestimation of the marginal productivity and an underestimation of the shadow prices

pollution from the electric power sector in japan and efficient pollution reduction abstract under the scheme of the kyoto protocol there are plans for the efficient reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the electric power sector nuclear power generation which emits no carbon dioxide in the process of generating electricity has come under scrutiny however this energy produces a new environmental issue the disposal of radioactive waste first we derive shadow prices of carbon dioxide and low level waste as marginal abatement costs in the case of the electric power sector in japan employing a directional output distance function it is found that the shadow prices are us 39 per tonne for carbon dioxide and us 1531 per liter for low level waste secondly we calculate the indirect morishima elasticity between carbon dioxide and low level waste in order to identify their substitutability and it is found that the substitution of low level waste for carbon dioxide is easier than the reverse this result suggests that with the amount of generated electricity fixed carbon dioxide can be substituted more easily by low level waste when the relative price of carbon dioxide increases for example as a result of implementation of a carbon dioxide tax or an emissions trading system

mixed strategy nash equilibrium in data envelopment analysis abstract in a typical productivity analysis the efficiency measure assumes a perfectly competitive market with an endogenous price and depends on a fixed orientation with respect to a specific firm such as an input oriented measure when an imperfectly competitive market affects the endogenous price however firms may take a mixed strategy approach to address uncertain competition this study proposes a mixed strategy measure msm we construct a model embedded with a data envelopment analysis dea framework that identifies the mixed strategy nash equilibrium in the first stage and considers a probabilistic and multi oriented efficiency measure in the second stage based on the environmental regulation and a typical nash measure we create two indices environmental consistency and strategic consistency to support the business roadmap development we validate the proposed msm with an empirical study of china s electric power industry the results find that the proposed msm complements the nash measure and the msm model successfully supports our two managerial strategies invest in capacity expansion or develop emission abatement technology

regional allocation of carbon emission quotas in china evidence from the shapley value method abstract it is an important task for china to allocate carbon emission quotas among regions so as to realize its carbon reduction targets and establish the national cap and trade carbon market meanwhile it is supposed to be cost effective to jointly reduce china s carbon emissions through some collaborative activities among regions then a natural question is how to allocate the quotas among regions in light of the collaboration for this purpose the shapley value method is adopted and the results show that first the regions with higher gdp higher carbon outflow and higher carbon reduction connection should be allocated more carbon quotas moreover when the collaboration is considered the optimal allocation of carbon quotas among regions will change significantly compared to the basic quotas by the entropy method and the central region is allocated the largest proportion of carbon quota among regions which indicates its largest radiation effect besides the collaboration between the central region and northern coast region and that between the central region and the eastern region should be paid close attention these results may provide insightful support for decision makers to promote collaborative carbon reduction and allocate carbon quotas in china

slacks based efficiency measures for modeling environmental performance we develop two slacks based efficiency measures for modeling environmental performance on the basis of environmental dea technology of the two measures one is a composite index with a higher discriminating power for modeling economic environmental performance and the other can be used to estimate the impacts of environmental regulations we apply the proposed measures to model the co2 emissions of 30 oecd countries from 1998 to 2002 and present the results obtained

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency in their comment subhash c ray and evangelia desli 1997 hereafter rd point out that the specification of the decomposition of the malmquist productivity index used by fare et al 1994 hereafter fgnz is not unique and propose and compute an alternative specification of that decomposition we will discuss additional decompositions at the end of this note but proceed here by comparing the rd decomposition with fgnz based on both conceptual and computational grounds rd provide a discussion of the overall malmquist productivity index including the important issue of when this index is equivalent to the traditional notion of total factor productivity tfp namely under the condition that the reference technology be consistent with constant returns to scale crs as they point out this will yield a measure of tfp even if the true underlying technology is not crs for example both rd and fgnz use the crs reference technology to compute overall malmquist productivity one of the key issues raised is the role of the underlying scale properties of the benchmark technologies used to define and compute both productivity and its components in particular two reference technologies are employed in both rd and fgnz what we refer to as crs and variable returns to scale vrs technologies by construction these technologies are nested the crs technology contains the vrs technology as in figure 1 in rd this nestedness provides the logical basis for our decomposition at a very intuitive level we would argue that these two benchmarks can be used to provide bounds on the underlying true but unknown technology 2 intuitively we see the vrs technology providing a type of convex inner approximation whereas the crs technology provides a type of convex outer approximation thus these two technologies provide alternative benchmarks they do not require that the data satisfy either crs or vrs another possible intuitive interpretation is that the crs captures a perhaps hypothetical long run and the vrs approximates the short run as a reference technology the crs technology has some very useful features for example it captures the notion of maximal

productivity and environmental regulation the effect of the nitrates directive in the french pig sector this paper measures the ensuing changes in productivity in the french pig sector following the introduction of the european regulation addressing water pollution by nitrates from agriculture productivity is measured using the malmquist luenberger index the sources of changes in productivity observed are examined by breaking down this index into its technical progress and efficiency components the results show that in the early stages increases in productivity were stimulated by increased efficiency before being driven by technical progress the estimations regarding the sources of efficiency gains for the farms in the sample technical efficiency efficiency of scale and environmental efficiency are then used to estimate the indirect costs and benefits or negative costs linked to the introduction of the environmental regulation controlling the disposal of organic manure and the management of nitrogen surplus from pig farms the existence of a win win effect as regards the porter hypothesis relation between efficiency and environmental regulation is highlighted for the french pig sector

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

shadow pricing of undesirable outputs in nonparametric analysis abstract for three decades a growing interest in the modeling of desirable and undesirable outputs has led to a theoretical and methodological debate in the nonparametric literature on production technology and efficiency the first main discussion is about the way of modeling bad undesirables as inputs or outputs or by transformation functions the second debate concerns the implications of the weak disposability assumption in the modeling of bad outputs in particular the possibility of assigning unexpected signs to shadow prices of bad outputs in addition we point out a current error in the modeling of weak disposability under a variable returns to scale technology in this paper we introduce a hybrid model to ensure the economically meaningful jointness of good and bad outputs while constraining shadow prices of bad outputs to their expected sign we argue that it is a sound compromise to model undesirable outputs with a meaningful primal dual economic interpretation finally we propose an extension to define shadow prices for undesirable outputs following the law of one price loop rule

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

cost of energy and environmental policy in portuguese co2 abatement scenario analysis to 2020 abstract this paper quantifies the contribution of portuguese energy policies for total and marginal abatement costs mac for co2 emissions for 2020 the times pt optimisation model was used to derive mac curves from a set of policy scenarios including one or more of the following policies ban on nuclear power ban on new coal power plants without carbon sequestration and storage incentives to natural gas power plants and a cap on biomass use the different mac shows the policies effects in the potential for co2 abatement in 2020 in the most encompassing policy scenario with all current and planned policies is possible to abate only up to 35 of 1990 emissions at a cost below 23 t co2 in the more flexible policy scenarios it is possible to abate up to 10 of 1990 emissions below the same cost the total energy system costs are 10 13 higher if all policies are implemented 76 to 101 b roughly the equivalent to 2 01 2 65 of the 2005 gdp thus from a co2 emission mitigation perspective the existing policies introduce significant inefficiencies possibly related to other policy goals the ban on nuclear power is the instrument that has the most significant effect in mac

a new approach to measuring shadow price reconciling engineering and economic perspectives abstract shadow price is one of the most important pieces of information in environmental decision making two different approaches namely economic and engineering have been applied to obtain the shadow price of undesirable outputs while using different methodological backgrounds and perspectives the current study proposes a new conceptual framework and an economic estimation model to reconcile the shadow price estimates derived via the two approaches we also suggest a new mapping rule that incorporates the concept of abatement level which is a basic element in the engineering approach as a result the proposed model generates continuously changing estimates i e comprising a shadow price curve based on the abatement level we further investigate the determinant factors of shadow price by using second step regression the suggested methodology is used to investigate the shadow price of carbon emissions in south korean electricity generating plants thus yielding relevant policy implications

valuation of marginal co2 abatement options for electric power plants in korea the electricity generation sector in korea is under pressure to mitigate greenhouse gases as directed by the kyoto protocol the principal compliance options for power companies under the cap and trade include the application of direct co2 emission abatement and the procurement of emission allowances the objective of this paper is to provide an analytical framework for assessing the cost effectiveness of these options we attempt to derive the marginal abatement cost for co2 using the output distance function and analyze the relative advantages of emission allowance procurement option as compared to direct abatement option real option approach is adopted to incorporate emission allowance price uncertainty empirical result shows the marginal abatement cost with an average of 14 04 ton co2 for fossil fueled power plants and confirms the existence of substantial cost heterogeneity among plants which is sufficient to achieve trading gains in allowance market the comparison of two options enables us to identify the optimal position of the compliance for each plant sensitivity analyses are also presented with regard to several key parameters including the initial allowance prices and interest rate the result of this paper may help korean power plants to prepare for upcoming regulations targeted toward the reduction of domestic greenhouse gases

the rise of europe atlantic trade institutional change and economic growth the rise of western europe after 1500 is due largely to growth in countries with access to the atlantic ocean and with substantial trade with the new world africa and asia via the atlantic this trade and the associatedcolonialism affected europe not only directly but also indirectly by inducing institutional change where initial political institutions those established before 1500 placed significant checks on the monarchy the growth of atlantic trade strengthened merchant groups by constraining the power of the monarchy and helped merchants obtain changes in institutions to protect property rights these changes were central to subsequent economic growth

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

cost based modelling of optimal emission quota allocation abstract given that a fixed national emission reduction target could be achieved by imposing emission quotas among multiple decision making units under administration a novel nonlinear programming approach is proposed in this paper to obtain an optimal emission quota allocation in a least cost way marginal emission abatement cost curves are simulated based on the environmental performance and marginal emission abatement costs measured in a set of parametric directional output distance functions with multi inputs and multi outputs further the proposed model is applied to empirically investigate the optimal carbon emission quota allocation for china s building construction industry among thirty three provinces in three different regions the results indicate that the relatively developed eastern region in china has higher marginal emission abatement cost and can be imposed with more emission quotas while the central and western regions can undertake more emission reduction approximately 74 million rmb can be saved by implementing the optimal emission allocation proposed in this paper as compared to a uniform emission quota allocation the findings are of great theoretical methodological and practical significance for policymakers and social science researchers in terms of climate change mitigation

explaining micro entrepreneurship in rural vietnam a multilevel analysis in the literature on entrepreneurship there is an ongoing debate about the impact of regional factors on the entrepreneurial process to date most of the empirical work on the influence of regional characteristics on entrepreneurship has focused on developed countries while empirical work that analyses the regional determinants of micro entrepreneurship in rural areas of emerging markets remains scare this paper uses three level binary logistic random intercept models to analyse the effects of explanatory factors at different levels on micro entrepreneurship in rural vietnam our analyses show that identifying the motivation behind starting a micro enterprise is a good way to split entrepreneurship into two groups namely opportunity and necessity driven entrepreneurship which are influenced by very different explanatory factors at different levels we find evidence that in rural areas of emerging markets the individual level dominates with regard to explaining both opportunity and necessity driven entrepreneurship nevertheless the regional level has a significant impact albeit only on opportunity driven entrepreneurship

non parametric productivity analysis with undesirable outputs an application to the canadian pulp and paper industry this article extends the chavas cox approach to non parametric analysis by incorporating undesirable outputs to provide a more complete representation of the production technology inner and outer non parametric technology bounds are constructed the methods are illustrated with application to time series data for the canadian pulp and paper industry conventional measures that ignore changes in pollutant outputs underestimate true productivity growth further there is a large gap between estimates generated with reference to inner and outer bounds to the technology suggesting that researchers need to be aware of the limitations of results derived from analyses relying only on dea methods copyright 2001 oxford university press

co2 emission abatement cost and its decomposition a directional distance function approach accurately estimating carbon dioxide co2 abatement costs and effectively identifying the factors impacting those costs can improve the applicability and effectiveness of policy implementation this paper proposes a new method to estimate co2 abatement costs cac based on the directional distance function the method theoretically decomposes cac into carbon productivity and output elasticity of substitutions this decomposition can identify the types of cac the method also investigates the effects of development mode selection on cac by selecting different directional vectors following the theoretical discussion an empirical study is presented focusing on high energy consumption firms in the united states u s the results were as follows 1 in sustainable development mode changes in the average cac of all firms were caused both by carbon productivity and output elasticity of substitution carbon productivity dominated cac differences among different firm types 2 in general the amelioration potential of firm technology and environmental management was gradually explored by firms during sample period corresponding environmental regulatory strategies are needed for firms with different cac characteristics 3 firms selecting different development modes will realize significant differences in cac firms in the sustainable development mode had the highest cac levels however this mode was best for achieving a win win between economic benefits and environmental protection

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

tightening environmental standards the benefit cost or the no cost paradigm ms ff ichael porter and claas van der linde have written a paper that is interesting and to us at least somewhat astonishing it is a defense of environmental regulation indeed an invitation to more stringent regulation that makes essentially no reference to the social benefits of such regulation this approach contrasts starkly with the methods that economists and other policy analysts have traditionally used when assessing environmental or other regulatory programs the traditional approach consists of comparing the beneficial effects of regulation with the costs that must be borne to secure these benefits for environmental regulation the social benefits include the reductions in morbidity or premature mortality that can accompany cleaner air the enhanced recreational opportunities that can result from water quality improvements the increased land values that might attend the cleanup of a hazardous waste site the enhanced vitality of aquatic ecosystems that might follow reductions in agricultural pesticide use or any of the other potentially significant benefits associated with tighter standards from this benefit cost approach emerges the standard tradeoff discussed in virtually every economics textbook porter and van der linde deny the validity of this approach to the analysis of environmental regulation claiming it to be an artifact of what they see as a static mindset in their view economists have failed to appreciate the capacity of

the calculation of shadow prices for industrial wastes using distance functions an analysis for spanish ceramic pavements firms abstract this paper deals with the calculation of shadow prices for two industrial wastes generated on their production processes by 18 firms belonging to the spanish ceramic pavements industry these prices are then used to calculate an extended productivity index which takes into consideration wastes going with the production of marketable goods we follow the methodological approach first proposed by fare et al the review of economics and statistics 75 1993 a negative correlation is found between absolute shadow prices and wastes production intensity reflecting a greater marginal cost of eliminating wastes for those firms using less contaminant production processes differences between a conventional labour productivity index and an extended productivity index are also statistically related to firms characteristics such as size previous investments in cleaner technologies and affiliation to a technological institute

sources of production inefficiency and productivity growth in china a global data envelopment analysis abstract the current mode of production in china is extensive and inefficient and has caused great stress on both resources and the environment this paper focuses on analyzing the sources of production inefficiency and productivity growth in china here a developed slacks based measure is utilized to decompose production inefficiency into three components input inefficiency economic output inefficiency and environmental inefficiency furthermore by applying a method based on global data envelopment analysis we take a further step to analyze the key factors responsible for the change of environmental productivity during 2003 2011 from the point of view of technical progress productive scale and management level the results show that redundancy in energy and labor inputs and excessive emission of sulfur dioxide chemical oxygen demand and ammonia nitrogen are the main sources of production inefficiency in china during the sample period the efficiency in all inputs and environmental emissions has improved except for capital input efficiency which had a decreasing trend further analysis shows that the overall environmental productivity in china has begun to follow an ascending path technical progress is the most powerful contributor to china s productivity growth while the decreases in scale and management efficiency are the two main obstacles preventing productivity improvement

a fractionally integrated autoregressive moving average approach to forecasting tourism demand the primary aim of this paper is to incorporate fractionally integrated arma p d q arfima models into tourism forecasting and to compare the accuracy of forecasts with those obtained by previous studies the models are estimated using the volume of monthly international tourist arrivals in singapore empirical findings demonstrate the evidence that the approach we propose generates relatively lower sample mean absolute percentage errors mapes this study also deals with the volatile data faced by a forecaster we use the asian financial crisis and the september 11 event as examples of economic and political shocks with respect to the objective of shaving the coefficient mape forecasts based on the selected arfima models dominate convincingly

potential cost savings from internal external co2 emissions trading in the korean electric power industry abstract korea plans to introduce an emissions trading scheme for the controlling greenhouse gas emissions in 2015 using shephard s 1970 output distance function we first estimate the shadow price of co 2 for power generators in the korean fossil fueled electric generation industry then by assuming that each power generator is required to reduce co 2 emissions by one ton we compute the potential cost savings from internal trading among generators within the same plant and from external trading across plants at prevailing market prices the results indicate that on average the generators paid 14 63 to abate one ton of co 2 emissions in 2007 plants realized additional gains through external trading in particular cost savings from trades between different fuel fired plants were substantial

plant level productivity efficiency and environmental performance of the container glass industry this paper presents a methodology and empirical results based on themalmquist productivity index we measure productivity while treatingpollution as an undesirable output our estimates show that technicalchange has contributed to productivity and environmental performancegrowth in the container glass industry an energy and pollution intensivesector changes in inter plant efficiency over time have made thisproductivity growth more rapid than otherwise would have occurred withthe underlying technical change the efficiency estimates show that thereare both opportunities to improve productivity and reduce pollution in thisindustry as well as productivity losses associated with the emissionscontrol the shadow prices for nox the undesirable output we analyze is quite high compared to other regulated sectors

technical efficiency shadow price of carbon dioxide emissions and substitutability for energy in the chinese manufacturing industries abstract china is the world s largest co 2 producer and energy consumer in this paper we calculate the maximum technically obtainable co 2 emissions reduction from the efficient use of inputs and estimate the shadow prices of co 2 emissions in order to assess the potential cost savings deriving from trading emissions among industries by measuring the input distance function for 30 chinese manufacturing industries our empirical results indicate that co 2 emissions could be reduced by as much as 680 million tons in the aggregate the shadow prices of co 2 vary from a high of 18 82 to a low of zero across industries with an average of 3 13 per ton additionally the estimated indirect morishima elasticities of substitution of capital for fossil fuels indicate that the substitutabilities of capital for oil gas and coal are higher than the substitutability for labor

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

energy efficiency and marginal carbon dioxide emission abatement cost in urban china abstract energy efficiency improvement and carbon emission reduction are two important ways to mitigate energy consumptions and global warming this paper aims to examine energy efficiency and carbon dioxide co2 emissions abatement costs of city urban areas in china to this end an improved slacks based measure approach is introduced which considers the linkage between desirable and undesirable outputs then measures of energy efficiency co2 emission abatement cost and comprehensive state index of co2 emissions abatement cost and co2 emissions reduction potential are defined the proposed model is then applied to the dataset of 285 cities in china during 2008 2012 the results show that most city urban areas in china have relatively low energy efficiencies surprisingly there are gradually narrowing gaps regarding mean energy efficiencies between areas during 2008 2012 nevertheless there are great disparities in energy efficiencies between cities within a typical area and even a provincial region it is found that co2 emissions abatement cost in urban china exhibits an increasing trend during the study period also significantly geographic disparities in abatement costs between areas regions and cites are found specifically energy efficiency has significantly positive correlation with the comprehensive state index in china some important findings and useful policy implications are achieved

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

how can china reach its co2 intensity reduction targets by 2020 a regional allocation based on equity and development in late 2009 the chinese government committed to cut its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product gdp by 40 to 45 of 2005 levels by 2020 this has raised the issue of how to allocate the co2 reduction target regionally to meet the national reduction target to meet this objective the following aspects may be taken into consideration equity principles common but differentiated responsibilities intensity reduction target fulfillment and economic difference and reduction potential among provinces this paper selects per capita gdp accumulated fossil fuel related co2 emissions and energy consumption per unit of industrial added value as indicators for emission reduction capacity responsibility and potential respectively based on these three indicators a comprehensive index is developed and an intensity allocation model constructed as decision makers may have different preferences when allocating the reduction burden we allocate different weights to the indicators analyzing the results using cluster analysis the following aspects may also be considered together with the national regional development strategy to determine how to share the burden the reduction potential of various regions implementation potential of the plans and promotion of a highly efficient low carbon economic development model

tourism forecasting and the policymaker criteria of usefulness abstract this article is a sequel to one by the author in the september 1982 issue of tourism management in which the question of what futures research could contribute to tourism policy was raised here the subject is explored further and a comparison of various forecasting techniques is used to investigate how far forecasting is and could be useful in supporting tourism policies

energy abatement in chinese industry cost evaluation of regulation strategies and allocation alternatives abstract for chinese industry the costs of different energy consumption abatement scenarios are evaluated by the method of directional distance function these scenarios are based on the combinations of regulation strategies and allocation alternatives the former are sectors and provinces and the latter include the five principles of average intensity share absolute share discriminatory absolute and discriminatory intensity for all the scenarios the quantitative impacts in terms of output potential loss are calculated and compared due to less output potential loss for all the allocation alternatives the sector regulation strategy is shown to be more effective than the province regulation strategy it is also demonstrated that among all the scenarios considered the sector regulation based on the intensity share principle and the province regulation based on the absolute share principle are the two optimal the performances of energy abatement allocation of the 11th and 12th five year plans of china are assessed against the simulated scenarios

messy marginal costs internal pricing of environmental aspects on the firm level abstract internal pricing of environmental aspects is usually not embedded in management accounting systems therefore we first show that pricing from a corporative perspective is possible and applicable contrary to common belief we also show that marginal costs curves of environmental aspects are often not monotonic and price changes are highly context specific we introduce a model that addresses different environmental aspects that translate into constraints or change direct cost factors in the objective function environmental constraints originate from different types of limit values concerning emissions and production processes as well as restraining the potential environmental damage as the outcome of ecological valuation methods direct cost factors include the taxation of emissions and costs stemming from being involved in the emissions trading market our model allows for calculating the marginal indirect costs of these environmental aspects as the constraints might enforce factor and product substitutions we show that the marginal costs differ substantially from the direct costs and do not follow a predictable pattern sensitivity analysis and parametric programming are applied to set up an internal pricing and cost allocation scheme for environmental aspects specifically focusing on the pricing of emissions resources and processes of production and recycling the model s implications on corporate decision making are illustrated by a numerical example that draws on the opportunity of process substitution e g producing a product on different machines even though we cannot use original data for proprietary reasons such settings are highly relevant in industry and the energy sector

decomposition of the environmental inefficiency of the meta frontier with undesirable output abstract in this paper we present an alternative analysis framework to evaluate the effects of technology heterogeneities and undesirable output on environmental efficiency measurement the proposed framework combines the directional distance function and a meta frontier analysis it can be used to measure efficiency improvements brought about by enhanced technical management and technological advances for demonstration purposes we used the framework to measure the environmental efficiency in 90 countries worldwide for the 2003 2007 period the results showed that when the meta technology set is used as the evaluation basis the average environmental efficiency of high competitiveness countries is greater than that of lower middle low and upper middle competitiveness countries the upper middle competitiveness countries perform worse than the lower middle and low competitiveness countries because of the excessive labor force usage and carbon dioxide emissions in these countries we also found that the environmental inefficiency of the meta frontier for high competitiveness countries can be attributed to managerial failure in the production process whereas that for upper middle lower middle and low competitiveness countries can be attributed to technological differences

disagreements spinoffs and the evolution of detroit as the capital of the u s automobile industry the agglomeration of the automobile industry around detroit michigan is explained using a theory in which disagreements lead employees of incumbent firms to found spinoffs in the same industry predictions of the theory concerning entry and firm survival are tested using data on the origin location and years of production of every entrant into the industry from 1895 to 1966 the geographic concentration of the industry is attributed to four early successful entrants and the many successful spinoffs they spawned in the detroit area and not to conventional agglomeration economies benefiting co located firms as featured in modern theories of agglomeration implications of the findings regarding firm strategy are discussed

is energy intensity important for the productivity growth of eet adopters abstract energy efficient technologies eet have attracted strong interest because of their role in reducing environmental damage their adoption however remains rather low while their impact on productivity is substantial and differentiating with respect to technological characteristics energy intensity being such an obvious characteristic could be employed to classify eet adopters thus giving rise to two heterogeneous technologies i e those corresponding to firms of low and high energy consumption hence this paper examines the impact of energy intensity on the productivity growth of firms adopting eet in varying time intervals through a metafrontier based framework while also decomposing that impact in terms of technical efficiency and scale efficiency changes the analysis is complemented by examining the role of firm specific characteristics on the productivity growth through linear regression

which policy is more effective carbon reduction in all industries or in high energy consuming industries from dual perspectives of welfare effects and economic effects abstract carbon emission reduction policy is the main method to curb carbon emissions and tackle climate change however few studies have investigated the effectiveness of carbon emission reduction polices from the welfare and economic perspectives this study establishes a dynamic general equilibrium model with input output structure and compares the effects of emission reduction in all industries and in high energy consuming industries the main conclusions are that carbon emission reduction constraints for all industries have more significant negative impacts on consumption and social welfare compared to emission reduction constraints for high energy consuming industries to be more precisely carbon emission reduction in high energy consuming industries has comparative advantages in maintaining social welfare stability regarding economic effects compared with the carbon emission reduction in high energy consuming industries carbon emission reduction in all industries leads to a larger decline in total output and outputs of most industries however the role of carbon emission reduction in all industries is more significant in promoting employment the carbon emission reduction policies of all industries and high energy consuming industries have strengths in economic effects respectively the findings could provide references for the government to take appropriate measures to promote carbon emission reduction and economic growth

optimal carbon allowance price in china s carbon emission trading system perspective from the multi sectoral marginal abatement cost abstract china s carbon emission trading system ets was officially launched at the end of 2017 to further promote carbon emissions mitigation in the ets the carbon price is the key factor determining whether the emission reduction target can be achieved the optimal carbon price is the smallest marginal abatement cost that can achieve the emission reduction target this study simulates the marginal abatement cost curves of different sectors in china s ets and calculate the optimal carbon price of sector coverage scenarios based on the criteria that involve eight sectors in turn the results show that the marginal abatement cost decreases with increasing sector involvement the optimal carbon price to achieve the two intensity targets at the same time is between 345 yuan ton and 1140 yuan ton from the sectoral perspective the power sector undertakes the largest emission reduction while the transportation sector is responsible for smaller emission reduction china s ets will cause gdp losses from 1 63 to 2 27 compared with the bau scenario but it can achieve co2 reduction from 9 56 to 10 13

nash marginal abatement cost estimation of air pollutant emissions using the stochastic semi nonparametric frontier abstract emissions trading or cap and trade is a market based approach providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants marginal abatement costs mac also termed shadow prices of air pollution emissions provide valuable guidelines to support environmental regulatory policies for co2 so2 and nox the key contributors to climate change smog and acid rain this study estimates the marginal abatement cost of undesirable outputs with respect to the nash equilibrium on the stochastic semi nonparametric envelopment of data stoned in an imperfectly competitive market considering an endogenous price function of electricity the mixed complementarity problem micp is formulated to identify the nash equilibrium in a production possibility set the proposed model addresses the four issues of mac estimation in the existing literature applying the proposed method to an empirical study of 33 coal fired power plants operating in china in 2013 shows that stoned provides a robust frontier that is not sensitive to the outlier and the proposed interval of mac estimation validates the shadow prices corresponding to the nash equilibrium in an imperfectly competitive market

local entrepreneurship in context audretsch d b falck o feldman m p and heblich s local entrepreneurship in context regional studies this paper posits that regions provide locational factors which determine the industry structure and with it entrepreneurial opportunities whose exploitation influences regional dynamics to test this interrelation between regional characteristics and entrepreneurial activities seventy four west german regions were classified by their endowments with locational factors the local employees group specific propensity to start a business within the framework of count data models was then analysed the empirical results suggest the distinct existence of entrepreneurial regional regimes where local employees have a high propensity to start a business and routinized regional regimes with a lower propensity to generate local entrepreneurial activity audretsch d b falck o feldman m p et heblich s la relativisation de l esprit d entreprise local regional studies cet article affirme que les r

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

forecasting tourism demand with arma based methods abstract the forecast of tourism volume in the form of arrivals is of special importance for tourism and other hospitality industries because it is an indicator of future demand thereby providing basic information for subsequent planning and policy making in this paper three univariate arma based models are applied to tourism demand as represented by the number of world wide visitors to hong kong japan korea taiwan singapore thailand the philippines australia and new zealand the study employs both monthly and quarterly time series generated from nine principal tourist destinations in asian pacific region in the forecasting exercise to ensure the reliability of the forecasting evaluation forecasting performance based on disaggregated arrival series in a particular destination is examined as well the general impression is that the arma based models perform very well and in some cases the magnitude of mean absolute percentage error is lower than 2 level

forecasting international conference attendance abstract there are many tourism modelling forecasting studies but most of these are concerned with holiday tourism or total tourism ie not disaggregated by visit purpose conference tourism is virtually ignored in this paper an econometric model which explains tourism demand for an international conference is developed the model is specified in logistic form and is estimated using maximum likelihood techniques various alternative forms of the model are considered for the forecasting model selected good empirical results are obtained in terms of model fit and in contrast with previous non conference tourism forecasting findings the forecasts generated by the econometric model are more accurate than random walk forecasts

assessing the impact of formal and informal regulations on environmental and economic performance of brazilian manufacturing firms this study investigates the impact of formal and informal regulations on environmental and economic performance of brazilian manufacturing firms we adopt a dual approach where production technology is represented by a cost function approximated by a translog form pollution is considered as a negative by product that can be modified trough using either formal regulation inspections or sanctions or informal regulation community pressure a simultaneous equation model is estimated by three stage least squares on a sample of 404 industrial establishments located in the state of sao paulo brazil we show that pollution abatement costs for the brazilian manufacturing sector are different from zero which suggests that pollution emissions are affected by environmental regulation we also demonstrate that environmental performance of firms is jointly affected by formal and informal regulation lastly formal regulation is largely influenced by informal regulation and more specifically by community pressure

the forecasting of international expo tourism using quantitative and qualitative techniques this study predicts the number of visitors to an international tourism expo to be held in korea in 2012 an unprecedented event for the host city forecasting demand for such a mega event has received only limited attention in the literature unlike most studies forecasting international tourism demand forecasting expo demand involves using both quantitative forecasting models and qualitative technique because of data limitations combining quantitative techniques with willingness to visit wtv surveys predicts the expo demand at 8 9 million visitors in comparison using the delphi method experts predict expo demand at 6 8 million visitors for this study the delphi method provides more conservative estimates than estimates from combining quantitative techniques with wtv policy implications presented are directed toward expo planners and practitioners in terms of demand and supply side application of these results in the decision making process and future challenges surrounding demand forecasting

increasing agricultural productivity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions in sub saharan africa myth or reality the motivation for this study stems from two major concerns that are interlinked the first is the decades long food insecurity crisis faced by sub saharan african ssa countries which is still prevalent the second is the negative impact greenhouse gas ghg emissions from agriculture may have on future food production and which is likely to worsen the food insecurity problem the conundrum ssa farmers face is how to increase food output through productivity growth while minimizing ghg emissions to measure changes in productivity growth and ghg emissions this study evaluates the agricultural performance of 18 ssa countries by utilizing the malmquist luenberger index to incorporate good and bad outputs for the years 1980 2012 the empirical evidence demonstrates that productivity is overestimated when bad outputs are not considered in the production model the analysis provides a better understanding of the effectiveness of previous mitigation methods and which informs an appropriate course of action needed to achieve the twin objectives of increasing agriculture productivity while reducing ghg emissions

industrial natural gas consumption in the united states an empirical model for evaluating future trends abstract this study develops a statistical model of industrial us natural gas consumption based upon historical data for the 1958 2003 period the model specifically addresses interfuel substitution possibilities and changes in the industrial economic base using a relatively simple approach the framework can be simulated repeatedly with little effort over a range of different conditions it may also provide a valuable input into larger modeling exercises where an organization wants to determine long run natural gas prices based upon supply and demand conditions projections based upon this demand framework indicate that industrial natural gas consumption may grow more slowly over the next 20 yr than being projected by the u s energy information administration eia this conclusion is based upon the assumption that natural gas prices will follow oil prices as they have done over recent decades if natural gas prices should lag well below oil prices as envisioned by the latest eia outlook industrial natural gas consumption should rapidly expand well beyond the levels being projected by eia

green productivity growth in china s industrial economy abstract this paper uses a directional distance function ddf and the malmquist luenberger productivity index to estimate the changing patterns of green total factor productivity gtfp growth of 38 chinese industrial sectors during the period 1980 2010 unlike the measures of traditional total factor productivity tfp growth the ddf incorporates carbon dioxide emissions as an undesirable output directly into the production technology which credit sectors for simultaneously reducing their emissions and increasing their output our estimates of aggregate and sector level gtfp growth reveal that chinese industry is not yet on the path towards sustainable low carbon growth a dynamic panel data analysis of the determinants of gtfp across sectors is used to identify factors that might rectify this situation including state owned enterprise soe reform the growth of small private enterprises continued openness to foreign investment and higher spending on r d particularly in emission intensive sectors

productivity growth and environmental regulations accounting for undesirable outputs analysis of china s thirty provincial regions using the malmquist luenberger index this paper employs the malmquist luenberger ml productivity index to evaluate china s growth in total factor productivity tfp incorporating undesirable outputs during the period from 1989 to 2008 the ml productivity index and its components technical and efficiency changes are derived from the directional distance function which gives credit for an increase in good outputs and for reductions in undesirable outputs the average annual ml productivity growth accounting for undesirable outputs is 2 46 whereas the value of the traditional malmquist productivity index is 4 84 showing that the true tfp growth in china is overestimated if undesirable outputs are ignored we explore the strictness in enforcing environmental regulations and its impact on improvements in ml productivity the results show that the enforcement of environmental regulations in china is in general far below the levels achieved in the best performing regions and that the more stringent enforcement of environmental regulations would help to improve ml productivity growth in china

the applicability of marginal abatement cost approach a comprehensive review abstract the marginal abatement cost mac methodology is widely used in climate change policies policy makers rely on mac to assess feasible strategies and related costs to achieve emission reduction goals this paper introduces a variety of mac methodologies aiming at solving diverse problems which utilizes various calculable logic thus producing different results and implications this study applies a mind mapping method to capture differentiation of mac methods and systematically classify mac methodologies the applicability path analysis was proposed based on principles such as stakeholder type decision making objectives cost concept strategy mode and information scope our goal is to assess the applicability of different methodologies to reduce misuse by policy makers and to serve as a guide for subsequent research which might prompt and lead to the derivation of more consequential results in future studies the results of this study suggest that the complex method is not always better than the simplified method because policy makers are required to select the appropriate method according to the type of information needed it may even be suggested that mac could be reliable by ranking relative value of options compared with baseline rather than focusing on the absolute value of individual measures

on the impacts of carbon tax and technological progress on china using a dynamic national computable general equilibrium model we investigate the impact of carbon tax and energy efficiency improvement on the economy and environment of china the chinese social

analyzing and forecasting tourism demand with arar algorithm abstract this study investigates the arar model and its usefulness as a forecast generating mechanism for tourism demand for nine major tourist destinations in the asian pacific region the analysis is conducted on monthly inflow of international visitors covering the period 1975 01 2006 12 in monthly series we consider 6 12 18 and 24 months ahead forecasting horizons the accuracy of the forecasts in most cases is robust to the forecasting horizon based on such forecasting performance metric as mean absolute percentage error mape and root mean square error rmse the study is further expanded by including quarterly series in the forecasting exercise to ensure the reliability of the forecasting evaluation the 2 4 6 and 8 quarters ahead forecasting horizons are investigated a comparison between forecasts generated by monthly and quarterly data reveals that the performance is broadly similar finally the forecasts of arar are compared with those of seasonal arima which has been proven reliable in many forecasting contexts indeed arar model can be deemed as credible alternatives when modeling and forecasting tourism demand

advancing the experiment to reality perspectives on shanghai pilot carbon emissions trading scheme shanghai as the most advanced mega city in china has launched a pilot carbon emission trading scheme sh ets that is designed to achieve a compromise between the domestic context in shanghai and a need for national policy appeal this paper gives an overview of the latest progress of the sh ets and sheds some light on the features of key design components such as the threshold for inclusion sector coverage cap setting allowance allocation and the monitoring reporting and verification mrv system based on a concern that manipulative principles and economic dynamics may lead to uncertainties and ultimately influence the emission reduction effect of the scheme this paper conducts an evaluation of potential uncertainties such as those caused by changes in patterns of economic growth strategic trading activities related to the bankable allowances carbon leakage risks and insufficient mrv capabilities to advance the experiment to reality this paper suggests some changes are made to the pilot which include adjusting the allowance allocation principles to facilitate change in the domestic energy structure improving the disclosure of emission data to guarantee information symmetry gauging the carbon leakage risks to strengthen compliance and introducing risk management for non regulated players and derivatives products

a dea approach for estimating the agricultural energy and environmental efficiency of eu countries this study attempts to evaluate the energy and environmental efficiency of the primary sectors of the eu member state countries the evaluation is based on a non radial data envelopment analysis dea model which allows for non proportional adjustments to energy inputs and undesirable outputs and thus it provides different estimations for energy and environmental efficiency scores the 2001 2008 time period was selected for this research one of the most important findings is that countries like germany sweden or austria with strong environmental protection standards appear to be less energy and environmentally efficient compared with countries like denmark belgium spain france or ireland in addition a series of eastern european countries achieve low efficiency scores which can be characterized as expectable due to low technology level being implemented in the primary production process there are also two sub periods for this research the first one 2001 2006 covers the fully coupled with specific cultivations period for subsidy administation and the second 2007 2008 where the new decoupled subsidy scheme was implemented there are significant hints for considerable changes of energy and environmental efficiency after the implementation of the the new cap with the new member states siginificantly differ of both energy and environmental efficiency copmared with the older ones

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

environmentally sensitive productivity analysis of the canadian pulp and paper industry 1959 1994 an input distance function approach abstract this study employs a parametric input distance function that incorporates both desirable and undesirable outputs to provide a more complete representation of the production technology from which environmentally sensitive productivity and efficiency measures can be generated this framework also generates pollution abatement cost estimates that are useful for policy making an input based malmquist index of productivity growth that appropriately credits the producer not only for increases in marketable or desirable outputs but also for the production of improved environmental quality through pollution abatement activities is derived from the input distance function the method was applied to time series data from the canadian pulp and paper industry our shadow price estimates indicate that the marginal cost to producers of pollution control has been rising the main conclusion of this study is that productivity improvement from the social viewpoint has been stronger than conventional measures would suggest

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

a critical review of distance function based economic research on china s marginal abatement cost of carbon dioxide emissions abstract the last few years have witnessed a rapidly emerging literature estimating the marginal abatement cost or the shadow price of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in china using parametric or non parametric distance function approaches this is largely driven by the fact that china has become the world s largest carbon emitter and thus faced mounting domestic and international pressure to mitigate emissions there is an urgent policy need to model and predict the cost burdens of various mitigation scenarios consistent information about the marginal abatement cost of co2 emissions plays a crucial role in addressing this need however the existing literature has suffered from various issues that have severely weakened the scientific support that these studies could potentially provide for sound policy making this paper provides a thorough and critical review of this rapidly emerging literature and identifies important research directions that need the most attention from scholars

of free markets and a secular mind the value of economic decentralization and individual secular values in entrepreneurship building upon hayek s seminal work regarding the benefits of market decentralization in this study we examine the complementary role of an individual s secular values in further explaining the association between decentralization of economic affairs entrepreneurial activity and self employment we argue that studies on hayek s notion of decentralization may be incomplete in their conceptualization without a transition to individual morality based on more secular values we consider decentralization of economic affairs and secular values to explain why entrepreneurial activity differs across countries in study 1 we find that the decentralization of economic affairs increases the odds of being an entrepreneur in a startup but does not influence the likelihood of owning managing a business or perceptions related to the opportunity to start a business in study 2 we find evidence of mixed support for decentralization and self employment however with meaningful effect sizes but with marginal significance we find that an individual s secular values complement the association between decentralization of economic affairs and self employment the findings are robust to alternate specifications by demonstrating the role of secular values in strengthening decentralization we lay the foundation for melding economic perspectives with the freedom from religious ethos as an important consideration for entrepreneurial activity however the mixed effects of decentralization on different modes of entrepreneurship also call into question the value of decentralization in modern economies plain english summary higher levels of individual secular values even by a small amount enhance the benefits that economic decentralization can have on entrepreneurial activity in this paper we use a two study approach to examine how individual secular values might influence the effects of economic decentralization on entrepreneurial activity in study 1 we find that the decentralization of economic affairs increases the odds of being an entrepreneur in a startup but does not influence the likelihood of owning managing a business or individual perceptions related to existing opportunities to start a business in study 2 we find evidence of mixed support for the effects of economic decentralization on self employment however we find some evidence suggesting that an individual s secular values complement the association between decentralization of economic affairs and self employment thus the principal implication of this study is that policymakers should take into consideration the overall secular values present in society when making decisions regarding economic decentralization particularly with regard to understanding the potential effects that decentralization could have on entrepreneurial activity

capturing the least costly way of reducing pollution a shadow price approach abstract the production analysis literature is increasingly concerned with estimating marginal abatement costs yet most studies do not emphasize the ways in which pollutants may be reduced and their costs which makes them unable to identify the least costly compliance strategy this paper utilizes the materials balance principle to relate pollution to the employment of material inputs a production model which allows input and output substitution downscaling of operations pollution control and emission permits purchases as compliance strategies is proposed and the implications of joint and non joint pollution controls for the trade off between pollutants and desirable outputs are considered marginal abatement costs reflecting the least costly way of compliance are derived by exploiting the duality between the directional distance function and the profit function

marginal abatement cost air pollution and economic growth evidence from chinese cities abstract the directional distance function ddf with multiple bad outputs allows estimation of conditional marginal abatement cost mac that would be more informative than the unconditional mac estimated with a single pollutant applying a multi pollutant parametric output ddf approach we estimate the macs of co2 so2 and nox emissions for 105 chinese cities in 2006 2014 it is found that the period medians of the macs for the three emissions all increase over time while the medians of the macs for different cities tend to vary significantly a goodness of fit criterion is developed and used to evaluate the fit of alternative models which demonstrates the superiority of the multi pollutant model we have also shown that there exists a positive relationship between mac and economic growth finally several policy implications are suggested for reducing the overall emission abatement costs of china