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

quality of service efficiency and scale in network industries an analysis of european electricity distribution quality of service qos is of major economic significance in natural monopoly infrastructure industries in this article we present an efficiency analysis of electricity distribution networks from seven european countries we apply the stochastic frontier analysis method to multi output translog input distance function models to estimate cost efficiency and scale economies we show that introducing the quality dimension into the analysis affects estimated efficiency significantly especially that smaller utilities efficiency seems to decrease our results emphasize that qos should be an integrated part of efficiency and economic analysis of regulated natural monopolies

when where and how to estimate persistent and transient efficiency in stochastic frontier panel data models abstract in this paper we examine robustness of a recently developed panel data stochastic frontier model that allows for both persistent and transient also known as long run and short run or time invariant and time varying inefficiency along with random firm effects heterogeneity and noise we address some concerns that the practitioners might have about this model first given that there are two random time invariant components persistent inefficiency and firm effects the concern is whether the model can accurately identify them and if so how precisely can the model estimate them second there are two time varying random components transient inefficiency and noise and the concern is whether the model can separate noise from transient inefficiency and if so how precisely can the model estimate transient inefficiency third how well are persistent and transient inefficiency estimated under different scenarios viz under different configurations of the variance parameters of the four random components given that the model is quite complex relatively new and becoming quite popular in the panel efficiency literature we feel that there is need for a detailed simulation study to examine when where and how one can use this model with confidence to estimate persistent and transient inefficiency

statistical analysis and combination forecasting of environmental efficiency and its influential factors since china entered the wto 2002 2010 2012 abstract since china became a member of world trade organization wto its economy develops at a fast speed at the same time the environmental problem becomes more and more serious and increasingly affects economic development studying the factors that influence environmental efficiency has become an essential point in dealing with the relationship between economy and environment considering the differences in space and economic development among different districts this paper discusses the quantitative relationship among exports figure imports figure gdp per capita industrialization level fiscal decentralization and environmental efficiency of each chinese province by using statistical analysis furthermore this paper discusses differences among each district s influential factors from the perspective of spatial economics and makes combination forecast on the trend of environmental efficiency it also shows that the environmental efficiency of chinese provinces is generally at a low level in addition as the economic statuses of different provinces vary and the factors that influence environmental efficiency in different provinces also have significant differences each province should take certain measures to design the environmental protection policy in line with its local circumstance

fixed effect estimation of technical efficiency with time invariant dummies within estimation of the fixed effect stochastic frontier model does not identify parameters on time invariant explanatory variables if time invariant variables are important production inputs then standard efficiency estimates are biased this note details bias correction when time invariant inputs are dummy variables

earnings functions when wages and prices vary by location economists generally assume implicitly that the return to schooling is invariant across local labor markets we demonstrate that this outcome pertains if and only if preferences are homothetic a special case that seems unlikely our theory predicts that returns to education will instead be relatively low in expensive high amenity locations our analysis of u s data provides support for this contention returns to college are especially low in such cities as san francisco and seattle our findings call into question standard empirical exercises in labor economics that treat the returns to education as a single parameter

the effect of new type urbanization on energy consumption in china a spatial econometric analysis abstract china s urbanization is rapidly proceeding while bringing marked impact on the energy consumption this paper contributes to current literature by using an improved spatial econometric model stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat to investigate the effect of urbanization on energy consumption for china s regions the impact of urbanization is further disaggregated into direct and indirect impacts from the perspective of spatial econometrics results show that if the urbanization level increases by 1 0 energy consumption levels will correspondingly decrease by 0 089 the spatial spillover effect on adjacent areas is positive a 1 0 increase in one specific area s urbanization level leads to a 0 136 increase in an adjacent area s energy consumption it is suggested that it is essential to devote major efforts to energy conservation in the process of improving the new type urbanization in particular disaggregating china s targets for controlling energy consumption into smaller targets for different regions will contribute to controlling the growth of energy consumption

energy and environmental efficiency of china s transportation sectors under the constraints of energy consumption and environmental pollutions abstract the rapid growth of the economy in china has caused many problems for the country particularly the energy shortage and environmental pollution thus establishing a sustainable development of society has attracted considerable attention in recent years in this paper we evaluate the sustainability efficiency in terms of energy usage and environmental impact by using a new equilibrium efficient frontier data envelopment analysis eefdea approach for the first time dea is used in the context of required fixed reductions in both total energy consumption and total environmental pollution which is a realistic context that introduces a zero sum aspect to the problem as part of the analysis the generalized equilibrium efficient frontier eef is constructed based on minimum satisfaction degree maximization of all units considering both minimum and maximum adjustment strategy while most existing studies only minimized the weighted sum reduction finally the sustainability efficiency of transportation sectors of china s 30 main regions is analyzed by using our proposed model the results show that more effective measures should be taken for sustainable development

regional environmental efficiency in china an empirical analysis based on entropy weight method and non parametric models abstract while vigorously developing its economy china is attaching more and more importance to environmental protection and pollution control in different regions of china however there are great differences in economic development and the degree of environmental pollution in this study we use the entropy weight method to calculate the pollution indexes of different regions from 2015 to 2017 then we evaluate the chinese regional environmental efficiency based on a new non parametric frontier model moreover a new set of ranking interval models that treat the undesirable outputs as inputs is proposed to further describe the regional disparities of the environmental efficiency between different regions with robustness finally we conduct an empirical analysis by combining the stepwise regression and principal component analysis to identify the most influential variables that may affect regional environmental efficiency according to the results the southeast region of china performs best in environmental efficiency followed by the northeast region then the southwest region and the worst is the northwest region for managerial implications we find that the investment of high education and the development of the it industry can significantly increase regional environmental efficiency more importantly the results of the principal component analysis provide the government with a set of variables to strategically select the most appropriate strategy

stochastic estimation of firm inefficiency using distance functions econometric estimation of allocative and technical efficiency has frequently been carried out using a shadow cost function and its associated share or demand equations since the problem is formulated in terms of shadow prices the effect of allocative inefficiency on input usage must be computed indirectly from input share or demand equations as an alternative approach we derive and estimate an input shadow distance system comprising the dual shadow input distance function and the price equations derived from the shadow cost minimization problem estimated shadow quantities provide direct estimates of the effect of allocative inefficiency on input usage one can also easily calculate firm and time varying technical inefficiency by decomposing the residuals we also compute returns to scale and the cost savings obtained by eliminating both types of inefficiency our approach is illustrated using a panel of u s railroads both the cost function and the distance function are valid representations of multioutput technologies the arguments of the cost function are output quantities and input prices while the arguments of the distance function are input and output quantities the input distance function measures the extent to which the firm is input efficient in producing a given set of outputs while the cost function assumes cost minimization by a firm which is input efficient the shadow cost function is a generalization of the cost function and depends on output quantities and shadow internal to the firm input prices rather than actual market input prices thus the shadow cost function assumes shadow cost minimization but not actual cost minimization this function has frequently been employed in fixed effects estimation of allocative efficiency ae and technical efficiency te an observed input vector is technically efficient if it is on the isoquant of the observed output vector an input vector is allocatively efficient if the radial contraction of the input vector to the isoquant is cost minimizing identification of parameters that measure ae can be achieved by the estimation of a shadow cost system comprising the actual cost equation and the share or input demand equations which are expressed in terms of shadow prices and output quantities shadow cost systems have been estimated by atkinson and halvorsen 1984 sickles good and johnson 1986 eakin and kniesner 1988 kumbhakar 1992 and atkinson and cornwell 1994 among others given panel data the deviation of shadow from actual input prices can be measured by price specific inefficiency parameters that may vary across firms and over time however the estimation of the effect of

valuing varieties with imperfect output quality measurement markets for agricultural products may be inefficient when signals do not adequately reflect product characteristics important to market participants preferences can be explicitly reflected in price premiums for measurable characteristics using hedonic methods however when product quality information is costly to obtain the problem is compounded bundling of quality traits by variety can serve to signal product quality a procedure is developed to derive the value of different varieties in meeting buyer demands an application to the hard red spring market wheat illustrates the use of a procedure to distinguish among varieties and provides empirical support for the existence of akerlof s lemon market in the release of wheat varieties

regional low carbon economy efficiency in china analysis based on the super sbm model with co2 emissions abstract as the largest energy consumer and co 2 emitting country the chinese government is committing to a low carbon economy it is meaningful and contributes to evaluate and analyze the low carbon economy efficiency lcee of china a super slack based measure super sbm model with undesirable outputs as combined with the malmquist productivity index is proposed to measure the lcee and the dynamic low carbon economy efficiency dlcee of 30 provinces in mainland china from 2005 to 2012 the theil index is also used to measure the rationalization level of industrial structure rlis for discussing the improvements to the lcee in china the results indicate that the proposed undesirable outputs super sbm model can effectively rank the sbm ef cient provinces china s regional economic development does not follow a low carbon pattern with an average lcee of 0 517 as a whole the china s economic development is gradually following a low carbon development pattern with an annual lcee improvement of 4 5 the rlis of china is also gradually changing better as well through a comparative analysis of the lcee and rlis the 30 provinces are divided into three sub areas and relevant suggestions are presented for improving the lcee of different sub areas in the future

measuring the performance of thermal power firms in china via fuzzy enhanced russell measure model with undesirable outputs abstract thermal power has accounted for the major part of the electricity generation over recent several decades in china it plays an important role in supporting china s economic development while it also brings great pressure to the environment protection because of a large amount of pollution generated during its production in order to solve or alleviate the environmental problem caused by thermal power firms efficiency evaluation is the first important step as thermal power firm is a complex system with multiple inputs and multiple outputs usually including fuzzy data and undesirable outputs in the productions in this paper we build an integrated enhanced russell measure model based on data envelopment analysis for evaluating the performance of decision making units in the presence of the undesirable outputs in fuzzy circumstance then this new model is applied to analyze the environmental performance and provide the benchmarks for the thermal power firms in china which can guide the decision makers to make suitable future production plans for improving their performance

convergence analysis of regional energy efficiency in china based on large dimensional panel data model abstract with the advent of the era of big data large dimensional spatial panel data is gradually used to do empirical research in the macroeconomic field this paper adopts a data envelopment analysis dea approach to calculate regional energy efficiency based on the perspective of total factor energy efficiency using statistical data of 30 administrative regions in china on basis of spatial effects the paper assesses the convergence of regional energy efficiency in china using large dimensional spatial panel data model our results indicate that 1 there is significant spatial autocorrelation and clear spatial effects in china s regional energy efficiency thus spatial effects should not be ignored when assessing the convergence of regional energy efficiency in china 2 during the period from 2000 to 2014 china s regional energy efficiency not only exhibits absolute convergence but also exhibits conditional convergence the convergence rate is higher than the rate of absolute convergence after controlling for the initial conditions of the level of economic development foreign direct investment and government influence 3 the convergence rate of china s regional energy efficiency from 2004 to 2014 is higher than the convergence rate for the period of 2000 2004 which indicates that industry transfer has contributed to improvement in the convergence of regional energy efficiency in china since 2004

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

strategic and welfare implications of bundling abstract a standard oligopoly model of bundling shows that bundling by a firm with a monopoly over one product has a strategic effect because it changes the substitution relationships between the goods among which consumers choose bundling in appropriate proportions is privately profitable reduces rivals profits and overall welfare and may drive rivals from the market

multiple comparisons with the best with economic applications in this paper we discuss a statistical method called multiple comparisons with the best or mcb this paper is meant to introduce mcb to economists we discuss possible uses of mcb in economics the application that we treat in most detail is the construction of confidence intervals for inefficiency measures from stochastic frontier models with panel data we also consider an application to the analysis of labour market wage gaps copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

evaluation on china s forestry resources efficiency based on big data abstract the development of china s forestry resources has never been more challenging due to serious problems such as shortage inferiority and uneven distribution of forestry resources therefore the study and evaluation of china s forestry resources has a great significance to improve efficiency and ensure the sustainable development of the forestry resource meanwhile the vast territory huge population and widespread forest landscape of china have led to the numerous indexes and the huge data to perform the research and evaluation accurately this paper utilized the big data theory to analyze the relevant data of china s forestry resources this study collected the data from 31 inland provinces and municipalities of china from 2005 to 2013 after which we carefully examined economic social and ecological factors to choose assessment indexes and processed data accordingly firstly we performed a cross sectional dataset analysis using the method of data envelopment analysis to investigate the forestry resources efficiency in 31 inland provinces and municipalities of china in years 2008 2012 and 2013 secondly we analyzed time series data of the 31 inland provinces and municipalities from 2005 to 2013 using the malmquist total factor productivity index method our results showed the dominant factor that restraining forestry resources efficiency for the 31 inland provinces and municipalities is the implemented technology so we suggest increasing the investment in science and technology to improve the overall efficiency of forestry resources along with improvement of operation and management by relevant administrative departments to improve technology utilization the innovation of this paper lies in the dynamic process of analysis

fixed effect estimation of highly mobile production technologies we consider fixed effect estimation of a production function where inputs and outputs vary over time space and cross sectional unit we exploit variability in the spatial dimension to identify time varying individual effects without parametric assumptions on the effects while estimation is unbiased asymptotics along the spatial dimension allow estimation of robust standard errors and asymptotic normality of the marginal products also if inference on the estimates of the individual effects is warranted then spatial asymptotics provide asymptotic normality while precluding an incidental parameters problem caused by asymptotics along the time or crosssectional dimensions we apply our results to a production function of bottom trawler fishing vessels in the flatfish fisheries of the bering sea we find significant spatial variability of output catch which we exploit in estimation of a harvesting function we conclude that vessel individual effects did not change across the period 2002 to 2004 we apply the theory of ranking and selection to determine that individual effects are not statistically significant across vessels

room for improvement in low carbon economies of g7 and brics countries based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental kuznets curves abstract carbon emissions which are nowadays targeted for significant reduction cause global warming with climate change producing a series of side effects including economic losses and ecological extinction the data envelopment analysis approach has recently been employed for environmental estimations the target of this study is to introduce a new data envelopment analysis method in order to provide environmental improvement suggestions this study measures the room for improvements in low carbon economies of g7 group and brics group based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental kuznets curves the main findings are as follows i the g7 group has greater room for improvement in its carbonization value than the brics group before 2005 however the latter has greater room for improvement in carbonization value than the former after 2005 ii countries with the backfire effect of a high carbon economy include germany italy and south africa iii during the data period three environmental kuznets curves including energy intensity emission intensity and carbonization value do not satisfy the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis that the curves are inverted u shaped on the contrary the three environmental kuznets curves in this study are u shaped

inter industry wage differentials and the gender wage gap an identification problem an intuitively appealing method for estimating gender wage gaps by industry is shown to yield estimates that vary according to the arbitrary choice of left out reference groups for non industry cat

china s foreign trade and climate change a case study of co2 emissions abstract the globalization of trade has numerous environmental implications trade creates a mechanism for consumers to shift environmental pollution associated with their consumption to other countries carbon leakage exerts great influences on international trade and economy applying an input output approach the paper estimates the amount of carbon dioxide co2 embodied in china s foreign trade during 1997 2007 it is found that 10 03 26 54 of china s annual co2 emissions are produced during the manufacture of export goods destined for foreign consumers while the co2 emissions embodied in china s imports accounted for only 4 40 1997 and 9 05 2007 of that we also estimate that the rest of world avoided emitting 150 18 mt co2 in 1997 increasing to 593 mt in 2007 as a result of importing goods from china rather than manufacturing the same type and quantity of goods domestically during 1997 2007 the net additional global co2 emissions resulting from china s exports were 4894 mt then the paper divides the trade embodied emissions into scale composition and technical effect it was found that scale and composition effect increased the co2 emissions embodied in trade while the technical effect offset a small part of them finally its mechanism and policy implications are presented

testing for efficiency catching up we used advances in data envelopment analysis dea techniques to examine efficiency scores and investigate the issue of convergence and divergence in a cross country analysis specifically we used bootstrapping techniques to examine a data set of 52 developed and developing countries we found that when using the standard dea model some of the results were not robust further we broke the sample into groups to examine club convergence we found that efficiency scores were significantly different between groups and that there was some evidence of convergence of efficiency scores within each group

interindustry wage differentials and the gender wage gap using data from the march 1988 current population survey the authors find that the wages of female workers differ significantly by industry even when the analysis controls for workers productivity related characteristics although these interindustry wage differentials are at least as large as men s and are highly correlated with them as well there are statistically significant differences between the two of the overall gender wage gap the average female worker earns about 65 as much as the average male worker 12 22 can be explained by differences between the patterns of interindustry wage differentials of men and women and 15 19 by differences in the distribution of male and female workers across industries thus the combined industry effects explain about one third of the overall gender wage gap

study on china s low carbon development in an economy energy electricity environment framework abstract emissions mitigation is a major challenge for china s sustainable development we summarize china s successful experiences on energy efficiency in past 30 years as the contributions of energy usage management and integrated resource strategic planning which are essential for low carbon economy in an economy energy electricity environment e4 framework the paper studies the low carbon development of china and gives an outlook of china s economy growth energy electricity demand renewable power generation and energy conservation and emissions mitigation until 2030 a business as usual scenario is projected as baseline for comparison while low carbon energy and electricity development path is studied it is defined as low carbon energy electricity when an economy body manages to realize its potential economic growth fueled by less energy electricity consumption which can be characterized by indexes of energy electricity intensity and emissions per unit of energy consumption electricity generation results show that with eum china could save energy by 4 38 billion ton oil equivalences toes and reduce co2 emission by 16 55 billion tons with irsp china could save energy by 1 5 btoes and reduce co2 emission by 5 7 btons during 2010 2030 to realize the massive potential china has to reshape its economic structure and rely much on technology innovation in the future

the measurement and sources of technical inefficiency in the indonesian weaving industry production function models are estimated with a time series of cross section data on indonesian weaving establishments the sources of technical inefficiency are investigated three firm attributes are identified as being potentially related to firm efhciency tbey are firm ownership age and size the importance of these attributes as sources of inefficiency in the indonesian weaving industry is investigated and the implications of the find ings discussed

sustainability performance for china s transportation industry under the environmental regulation abstract traffic and transportation industry is a carbon intensive industry in china the implementation of environmental regulation is of important practical significance nowadays literatures lack of quantitative analysis on transport industry s sustainability performance under the environmental regulation by using a directional distance function this paper aims to investigate the effect of environmental regulation on this industry furthermore this paper measures its green total factor productivity under the general intensity of regulation and strict regulation from 2000 to 2010 results show that the economic growth mode in transportation industry is still the extensive mode while there is great potential for the improvement of energy saving and production

alternative technical efficiency measures skew bias and scale summary in the fixed effects stochastic frontier model an efficiency measure relative to the best firm in the sample is universally employed this paper considers a new measure relative to the worst firm in the sample we find that estimates of this measure have smaller bias than those of the traditional measure when the sample consists of many firms near the efficient frontier moreover a two sided measure relative to both the best and the worst firms is proposed simulations suggest that the new measures may be preferred depending on the skewness of the inefficiency distribution and the scale of efficiency differences copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

economic efficiency and frontier techniques abstract most of the literature related to the measurement of economic efficiency has based its analysis either on parametric or on non parametric frontier methods the choice of estimation method has been an issue of debate with some researchers preferring the parametric and others the non parametric approach the aim of this paper is to provide a critical and detailed review of both core frontier methods in our opinion no approach is strictly preferable to any other moreover a careful consideration of their main advantages and disadvantages of the data set utilized and of the intrinsic characteristics of the framework under analysis will help us in the correct implementation of these techniques recent developments in frontier techniques and economic efficiency measurement such as bayesian techniques bootstrapping duality theory and the analysis of sampling asymptotic properties are also considered in this paper