judicial productivity delay and efficiency a directional distance function ddf approach abstract the aim of this paper is twofold on the one hand it provides a contribution to the debate on judicial efficiency by conducting an applied research on the italian tax judiciary thanks to a database covering the activities of the italian tax courts over a 3 year period 2009 2011 on the other hand it also contributes to the methodological debate as it compares results obtained with data envelopment analysis dea and directional distance function ddf two related non parametric techniques which allow evaluating the efficiency of each observation as the radial distance from the efficient frontier defined by the best observations while dea has already been used to assess the mere technical efficiency of judicial systems the ddf offers a valuable additional contribution since it makes it possible to minimize the social cost of production of adjudication in the measurement this feature makes it particularly attractive in those sectors in which production externalities may arise such as judicial delays in the case investigated here additionally the paper first applies the bootstrap to the ddf procedure in order to provide more robust estimates and to compare them with the dea results

measuring the efficiency of energy intensive industries across european countries abstract this study evaluates the energy efficiency trends of five energy intensive industries in 23 european union eu countries over the period 2000 2009 in particular the performance of the construction electricity manufacturing mining and quarrying and transport sectors is examined the analysis is based on data envelopment analysis dea combined with the malmquist productivity index mpi which allows for distinctions between efficiency and technology changes over time at the second stage of the analysis cross classified multilevel modelling is applied to analyse the main drivers behind efficiency performance using a number of sector and country characteristics based on dea results an overall improvement in efficiency is observed in all sectors over the period the decomposition of the mpi indicates that technology change is primarily responsible for the improvements achieved in most sectors the results obtained by the cross classified model show among other things that the high electricity prices energy taxes and market share of the largest generator in the electricity market have a negative effect on industrial energy efficiency

returns to scale damages to scale marginal rate of transformation and rate of substitution in dea environmental assessment abstract this study discusses a new use of dea data envelopment analysis environmental assessment to measure mrt marginal rate of transformation and rs rate of substitution between desirable and undesirable outputs to discuss mrt and rs this study first examines a concept of disposability from the perspective of corporate strategies to adapt a regulation change on undesirable outputs the concept of disposability is separated into natural and managerial disposability then this study explores the computational framework of rts returns to scale and dts damages to scale the type of rts is measured within the natural disposability while the type of dts is measured within the managerial disposability considering the two types of disposability this study discusses mrt and rs between desirable and undesirable outputs as an illustrative example this study applies the proposed approach to evaluate the performance of us coal fired power plants this study finds that the regulation policy on no x and so 2 has been effective on their emission controls under us clean air act caa the regulation on co 2 or a major source of the global warming and climate change is still insufficient in the united states therefore this study recommends that us federal and local governments should regulate the amount of co 2 emission under the caa

sustainability development for supply chain management in u s petroleum industry by dea environmental assessment abstract environmental assessment and protection are important concerns in modern business consumers are interested in environmental protection they avoid purchasing products from dirt imaged companies even if their prices are much less than the ones produced by green imaged companies the green image is very important for business survivability in our global market a business concern associated with the green image is how to attain corporate sustainability where companies can attain both economic success and pollution prevention in their operations there is tradeoff between economic prosperity and environmental concern to attain a high level of corporate sustainability companies need to measure the current performance in terms of their operational and environmental achievements this study proposes a use of data envelopment analysis dea for such assessment the proposed dea assessment provides corporate leaders and managers with not only the measure of corporate sustainability but also information regarding how to invest for technology innovation for abatement of undesirable outputs e g co 2 as an application this study utilizes the proposed approach to measure the corporate sustainability of petroleum firms in the united states the petroleum industry is functionally separated into integrated and independent companies the integrated companies referred to as major have their large supply chains for both upstream e g exploration development and production of crude oil or natural gas and downstream e g oil tankers refineries storages and retails meanwhile the independent companies focus upon the upstream function but not the downstream in their business operations the empirical comparison between the two groups of petroleum firms identifies that the integrated companies outperform the independent companies because a large supply chain incorporated into the former group provides them with both a scale merit in their operations and an opportunity to obtain consumer s opinions on their business operations thus the large supply chain system covering business functions for upstream and downstream enhances corporate sustainability in the u s petroleum industry it is easily envisioned that the empirical findings discussed in this study are useful in preparing business strategy and industrial policy for the petroleum industry of not only the united states but also other nations involved in oil and gas production

marginal rate of transformation and rate of substitution measured by dea environmental assessment comparison among european and north american nations this study discusses the new use of dea data envelopment analysis environmental assessment to measure mrt marginal rate of transformation and rs rate of substitution among production factors e g inputs desirable and undesirable outputs to measure the degree on mrt and rs this study first examines a concept of disposability from the perspective of economic strategies to combat various environmental issues the strategies are extendable to a policy change for pollution prevention the underlying concept is separated into natural and managerial disposability under managerial disposability it is possible for us to measure an occurrence of desirable congestion or eco technology innovation considering the disposability concept this study discusses how to measure the type and magnitude of mrt and rs a problem of the mrt rs measurement is that these measures usually become unstable e g very large or small in these magnitudes because dea does not assume any functional form for economic activities to overcome such a difficulty this study equips dea environmental assessment with multiplier restriction by utilizing a unique feature on a proposed data treatment the multiplier restriction in dea has been never explored in previous works on environmental assessment in an application this study finds three important economic concerns on europe and north america first western europe outperforms eastern europe and north america in their unified efficiency measures under managerial disposability this study statistically confirms a difference between western and eastern europe but not between western europe and north america this result exhibits that eastern europe is not yet well developed at the level of the other two regions second eastern europe has exhibited mrt estimates that are different from western europe and north america the nations in eastern europe have an economic potential for industrial developments because the level of their industrial pollutions is less than that of the other two regions the potential is also found in their mrt estimates finally an interesting difference can be found in the rs estimate between eastern europe and western europe from 2008 to 2012 they have statistically exhibited a difference between the two regimes but not with north america this is because most nations in both western europe and north america have already attained a high level of economic successes so that they have a limited industrial potential under current production technology and eco technology the situation of the two regions will be changed along with new technology development in contrast eastern europe is different from the other two regions in terms of attaining such a level of social sustainability because of limited capital accumulation and limited opportunity for technology innovation

comparison among u s industrial sectors by dea environmental assessment equipped with analytical capability to handle zero or negative in production factors abstract a green image is recently an important component of corporate sustainability in modern business by extending the two previous works i e wang et al 2014 sueyoshi and wang 2014a this study discusses a new use of data envelopment analysis dea for environmental assessment by incorporating an analytical capability to handle zero and or negative in a data set the proposed approach provides us with not only new quantitative assessment on unified operational and environmental performance of firms but also information regarding how to invest for eco technology innovation for abating an amount of their industrial pollutions according to the previous studies the energy industry is an attractive investment target if desirable outputs are measured by return on assets roa as a short term concern and an amount of co 2 emission reduction the selection on a desirable output combination is important in understanding the corporate sustainability of the energy industry because it is the largest emitter among seven industry sectors examined in the previous studies however if the roa is replaced by a corporate value measured by tobin s q ratio as a long term concern the energy industry is not so attractive because it uses a very large production process so that green investment does not immediately increase the corporate value an empirical problem of these previous studies is that they have investigated only successful companies with positive roa or tobin s q ratios the analytical feature clearly indicates a methodological drawback of their studies in contrast this study pays attention to both successful companies with positive net incomes and unsuccessful companies with negative net incomes so being able to measure all aspects of their performance in a short term concern this study finds that the energy industry exhibits a high level of potential on green investment however the energy industry may be not attractive even in the short term concern i e net income partly because governmental regulations on their operation and pollution prevention efforts are stricter than the other industrial sectors this result may be seemingly inconsistent with wang et al 2014 rather the result indicates that successful energy firms can attain the corporate sustainability by investing eco technology innovation but unsuccessful ones cannot attain the sustainability even in the short term concern because they do not have large capital accumulation for eco technology investment whose importance has been first discussed by sueyoshi and goto 2010a in other words the eco technology investment for enhancing a high level of corporate sustainability depends upon an amount of net income generated by each energy firm

efficiency of the medical care industry evidence from the italian regional system abstract what might be the relation between clinical research and efficiency of medical care suppliers is the hypothesis of a positive relation consistent considering efficiency as the supplier s ability to maximize the number of patients hospitalized in a mobility process among regions i e mobility balance this work aims at highlighting the existence of a positive externality of pharmaceutical clinical research on that kind of efficiency in other words an externality is able to affect the patients perception of good bad quality of outputs supplied by the medical care industry leading their mobility process taking italy and the mobility of patients among regions into account an operational research study will be performed in order to support this assumption the goal of this work is to show an alternative way to increase the efficiency of medical care suppliers on the market of health care that is to say through their competitiveness on the market of human experimentation

dea radial and non radial models for unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability theoretical extension by strong complementary slackness conditions abstract this study proposes a use of data envelopment analysis dea for environmental assessment all radial and non radial models are discussed under natural and managerial disposability the natural disposability implies corporate strategy by which a firm attempts to decrease an input vector to decrease a vector of undesirable outputs given the decreased input vector a firm attempts to increase a vector of desirable outputs as much as possible this type of strategy supported by economists indicates negative adaptation to a regulation change on undesirable outputs in contrast the managerial disposability indicates opposite strategy by increasing the input vector this disposability expresses corporate strategy by which a firm considers the regulation change as a new business opportunity a firm attempts to improve its performance by utilizing new environmental technology and or new management this type of strategy supported by corporate strategists in u s business schools indicates positive adaptation to the regulation change on undesirable outputs using the proposed dea assessment this study examines the relationship among energy consumption economic development and environmental protection in japanese prefectures to theoretically extend the use of dea for environmental assessment this study incorporates strong complementary slackness conditions scscs into the proposed radial models the incorporation of scscs has three methodological strengths first dea scscs can handle an occurrence of multiple reference sets and multiple projections second the incorporation of scscs makes it possible to restrict dual variables multiples in a specific range without any prior information finally dea scscs can bypass the conventional procedure i e a radial model combined with an additive model used for dea radial measurement

japanese fuel mix strategy after disaster of fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant lessons from international comparison among industrial nations measured by dea environmental assessment in time horizon abstract on june 1 2015 the japanese government has announced that the fuel mix will consist of nuclear generation with a range between 20 and 22 and renewable generation with a range between 22 and 24 of the total electricity generation by 2030 a difficulty in understanding the governmental future energy plan is that it does not contain any scientific evidence concerning why japan needs to maintain the amount of nuclear generation and that of renewable at the level between 20 and 22 and between 22 and 24 respectively to investigate the future energy plan this study uses data envelopment analysis dea as a methodology the proposed dea approach incorporates the property of translation invariance the property indicates that an efficiency measure should not be influenced even if inputs and or outputs are shifted toward a same direction by adding or subtracting a specific real number the property makes it possible that we can evaluate the performance of organizations whose production factors i e inputs desirable and undesirable outputs contain many zeros and negative values in a data set such an occurrence of zero and negative in production factors is widely observed in many dea performance evaluations this study first uses the desirable property for dea environmental assessment in a time horizon the proposed dea environmental assessment identifies that the reasonable ranges for japanese future fuel mix are a combustible fuel generation within the range between 34 5 and 56 1 b hydro generation within the range between 22 4 and 40 5 c nuclear generation within the range between 10 4 and 13 7 d pumped hydro generation within the range between 3 9 and 6 9 and e renewable generation within the range between 3 7 and 8 4 all of which are measured by these generation capacities it is clearly identified that the future fuel mix proposed by the japanese government is inconsistent with the estimated one which we determine by relatively comparing it with the energy structures of 33 industrial nations the comparison indicates that the japanese future energy plan will be too ambitious to implement the future goal it is easily envisioned that the energy plan will have a considerable difficulty in future it is hoped that the electric power industry can access drastic technological advancements including eco technology innovation and then japan will be able to change the future direction on fuel mix as the government expects

capacity investment and market power in the economic value of energy firms regulation of energy firms faces the complex problem of balancing private earning a fair rate of return on investment and public assure safe and reliable supply of energy at the lowest possible costs goals tobin s q is a forward looking indicator on investment opportunities and on market power of firms that energy regulators can use for more effective regulation this paper presents the empirical evidence on the determinants of differences in observed values of tobin s q for a sample of large listed energy firms from 10 different countries in the period 2000 2006 we find that adjustment costs represent around sixty percent of the difference between economic and book value of the assets for the representative firm while rents from market power represent the other forty percent therefore across countries there is room for regulatory actions aiming at reducing energy prices but less than what may be inferred from the observed average q values

does environmental regulation affect energy efficiency in china s thermal power generation empirical evidence from a slacks based dea model abstract data envelopment analysis dea has gained much popularity in performance measurement of power industry this paper presents a slack based measure approach to investigating the relationship between fossil fuel consumption and the environmental regulation of china s thermal power generation we first calculate the total factor energy efficiency without considering environmental constraints an environmental performance indicator is proposed through decomposing the total factor energy efficiency the proposed approach is then employed to examine whether environmental regulation affects the energy efficiency of china s thermal power generation we find that the environmental efficiency plays a significant role in affecting energy performance of china s thermal generation sector decreasing the discharge of major pollutants can improve both energy performance and environmental efficiency besides we also have three main findings 1 the energy efficiency and environmental efficiency were relatively low 2 the energy and environmental efficiency scores show great variations among provinces 3 both energy efficiency and environmental efficiency are of obvious geographical characteristics according to our findings we suggest some policy implications

optimizing inventory s contribution to profitability in a regulated utility the averch johnson effect the averch johnson effect is a well known economic phenomenon through which regulated utility companies prefer a capital resource input combination that differs from an efficient level through dynamic network data envelopment analysis ndea this paper first investigates the existence of this effect on a dynamic input that is inventory the analysis was performed for a group of public electric utilities from 2005 to 2014 the result implies that these firms procure a significant extra amount in inventory materials and supplies beyond their efficient levels in order to explore the connection of this effect to profit motives we construct an analytical model of the inventory policy controlling the extra buying of material and supplies that will be inventoried and added to the firm s rate base the model is based on maximizing the net present value of total profits in the deterministic case two results are observed i the firm could achieve a finite optimum by adding a finite amount of inventory above the normal base level which assumes no impact of inventory on the rate hearing and ii the firm could theoretically achieve infinite optimum under the unconstrained model the primary contribution of this paper is the special case of extending typical inventory replenishment models to including the impact on prices and in turn profits in a regulated supply chain

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

returns to scale and damages to scale on u s fossil fuel power plants radial and non radial approaches for dea environmental assessment abstract this study proposes a new use of data envelopment analysis dea for environmental assessment paying attention to a methodological bias i e different methods produce different results dea is analytically classified into radial and non radial approaches the radial approach determines the level of unified operational and environmental efficiency by measuring an inefficiency score the score indicates the distance of a projection from an observed performance to an efficiency frontier in contrast the non radial approach determines the level of unified efficiency by measuring a total amount of slacks because each slack indicates inefficiency to avoid the methodological bias this study considers the use of radial and non radial approaches in this study we consider a production process where all organizations produce not only desirable good but also undesirable bad outputs as a result of their business operations to unify the two types of outputs this study discusses the concept of disposability which is separated into natural and managerial disposability the natural disposability indicates negative adaptation to a regulation change on undesirable outputs in contrast the managerial disposability indicates corporate strategy by which a firm considers the regulation change as a new business opportunity a firm attempts to improve its unified efficiency by utilizing new environmental technology and or new management this type of strategy indicates positive adaptation to the regulation change under the two disposability concepts this study discusses how to measure rts returns to scale under natural disposability and dts damages to scale corresponding to rts on undesirable outputs under managerial disposability the two scale measures are analytically discussed by the proposed radial and non radial approaches with scscs or without scscs where scscs indicate strong complementary slackness conditions an illustrative example on u s fossil fuel power plants indicates a policy implication that they need to introduce new technology for environmental protection this study also discusses a necessity of examining a methodological bias in energy studies empirical findings identified in this study document the practicality of the proposed approaches to measure rts dts

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

methodological comparison between dea data envelopment analysis and dea da discriminant analysis from the perspective of bankruptcy assessment abstract this study compares dea data envelopment analysis with dea da discriminant analysis in terms of bankruptcy assessment recently many dea researchers propose a use of dea as a quick and easy tool to assess corporate bankruptcy meanwhile other dea researchers discuss a use of dea da for bankruptcy based financial analysis the two groups are very different from the conventional use of dea because we have long applied dea to the measurement of operational performance or productivity analysis the two research groups open up a new application area bankruptcy based financial assessment for dea this study discusses methodological strengths and weaknesses of dea and dea da from the perspective of corporate failure the proposed comparative analysis has the three main criteria a how to handle negative data in financial variables b how to handle data imbalance between default and non default firms and c how to identify a failure process over time this study finds that dea is a managerial tool for the initial assessment of corporate failure and dea is useful for busy corporate leaders and financial managers in contrast dea da is useful for researchers and individuals who are interested in the detailed assessment of bankruptcy and its failure process in a time horizon

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

dea environmental assessment on u s industrial sectors investment for improvement in operational and environmental performance to attain corporate sustainability abstract environmental assessment has recently become an important business concern because consumers are interested in environmental protection they try to avoid purchasing products from dirt imaged companies which do not pay attention to environmental protection even if their prices are much less than the ones produced by green imaged companies thus a green image is very important for corporate survivability in a global market this study considers corporate sustainability indicating that companies need to consider both economic prosperity and pollution prevention in their operations to discuss the issue from corporate strategy for modern business this study discusses a use of data envelopment analysis dea for environmental assessment by focusing upon research and development r d strategy as well as technology innovation and selection for reduction of undesirable outputs e g co 2 emission this type of research has never been explored in previous studies it is easily envisioned that the proposed dea environmental assessment will guide corporate leaders in identifying how to invest for technology innovation to reduce an amount of undesirable outputs to discuss the practicality this study applies the proposed approach to 153 observations on s p 500 corporations in 2012 and 2013 the empirical investigation confirms that investors pay more serious attention to company s green image and the reality for a long run sustainability than profitability in a short run concern furthermore the energy sector is the best investment target among seven industrial sectors examined in this study the measurement of corporate sustainability can serve as an empirical basis in selecting what type of technology is fitted for a specific industry

the costs of shareholder activism evidence from a sequential decision model abstract this paper provides benchmarks for monitoring costs and evaluates the net returns to shareholder activism i model activism as a sequential decision process consisting of demand negotiations board representation and proxy contest and estimate the costs of each activism stage a campaign ending in a proxy fight has average costs of 10 71 million i find that the estimated monitoring costs reduce activist returns by more than two thirds the mean net activist return is close to zero but the top quartile of activists earns higher returns on their activist holdings than on their non activist investments the large sample evidence presented in this paper aids in understanding the nature and evolution of activist engagements

radial and non radial approaches for environmental assessment by data envelopment analysis corporate sustainability and effective investment for technology innovation abstract environmental assessment and protection are important concerns in modern business consumers are interested in corporate effort and investment for environmental protection it can be easily imagined that they avoid purchasing products from dirty imaged companies even if their prices are much less than the ones produced by green imaged companies a green image is recently a very important concern for corporate survivability in a competitive global market by extending previous works on environment assessment and corporate sustainability where companies need to consider both economic prosperity and pollution prevention in their operations this study discusses a new use of data envelopment analysis dea for environmental assessment by utilizing its radial and non radial measurements the proposed radial and non radial approaches may guide corporate leaders managers and policy makers by providing not only quantitative assessment on their efforts for environmental protection but also information regarding how to invest for technology innovation on abatement of undesirable outputs the empirical investigation identifies that the green investment in u s energy industry is useful for improving its unified operational and environmental performance if operational performance is measured by roa return on assets and an amount of co 2 emission reduction because the industry is the largest emitter among seven industry sectors examined in this study the green investment makes it possible that firms can increase their net incomes by a good corporate image however if the financial measure is replaced by a corporate value i e tobin s q ratio mainly measured by stock price the energy industry does not exhibit the best investment opportunity because the effect of green investment is limited on enhancing its corporate value the energy industry is a very large process industry so that the green investment does not immediately increase its corporate value as found in the other industrial sectors such as information technology industry

distribution of cost and profit efficiency evidence from indian banking this paper uses the nonparametric dea methodology to estimate cost and profit efficiency of indian banks during the post reform period the results show considerable variation in average levels of profit efficiency across various ownership categories of banks in general state owned banks are found to be more efficient than their private counter parts further efficiency tends to be low among the small banks assets up to rs 50 billion indicating that at the existing scale of operations these banks are operating far below the efficient frontier we also examine the distribution of efficiency using nonparametric kernel density estimates the analysis reveals a rightward shift of the efficiency distribution over the years a major part of this shift comes from the state owned banks based on the conditional distribution the study finds strong evidence of ownership explaining the efficiency differential of banks additionally bank size and product mix are also found to be important although to a lesser extent

undesirable outputs in efficiency valuations abstract efficiency measurement is usually based on the assumption that inputs have to be minimized and outputs have to be maximized in a growing number of applications however undesirable outputs are incorporated into the production model which have to be minimized in this paper various approaches for treating such outputs in the framework of data envelopment analysis dea are discussed and the resulting efficient frontiers are compared new radial measures are introduced which assume that any change of the output level will involve both undesirable and desirable outputs

modeling undesirable factors in efficiency evaluation abstract data envelopment analysis dea measures the relative efficiency of decision making units dmus with multiple performance factors which are grouped into outputs and inputs once the efficient frontier is determined inefficient dmus can improve their performance to reach the efficient frontier by either increasing their current output levels or decreasing their current input levels however both desirable good and undesirable bad factors may be present for example if inefficiency exists in production processes where final products are manufactured with a production of wastes and pollutants the outputs of wastes and pollutants are undesirable and should be reduced to improve the performance using the classification invariance property we show that the standard dea model can be used to improve the performance via increasing the desirable outputs and decreasing the undesirable outputs the method can also be applied to situations when some inputs need to be increased to improve the performance the linearity and convexity of dea are preserved through our proposal

environmental assessment for corporate sustainability by resource utilization and technology innovation dea radial measurement on japanese industrial sectors abstract this study proposes a new use of dea data envelopment analysis radial approach to examine the corporate sustainability of japanese industrial sectors the concept of corporate sustainability is measured by its subcomponent measures including uen unified efficiency under natural disposability uem unified efficiency under managerial disposability uenm unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability uei unified efficiency for intermediate measurement and uenm dc unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability with desirable congestion among the five measures the uei examines a degree of how each firm can efficiently utilize its resources the uenm dc examines a degree of how the firm can reduce an amount of undesirable outputs by technology innovation and or managerial change such a combined use between uei and uenm dc has been never explored in dea environmental assessment the empirical results obtained from the proposed approach have identified two important implications one of the two implications is that the japanese energy industry has been long under governmental regulation so that energy firms do not have corporate governance capabilities at the level of other industrial sectors which are competing in a global market in particular the implication is applicable to japanese electric power firms it is necessary for them to change their corporate governances e g by adding new executive board members who have international experience and or woman executives as widely found in american and european energy industries so that they can pay attention to consumers not regulatory agencies of the japanese government the other implication is that technology innovation can more effectively improve the performance of the energy sector employing high efficiency and low carbon generation technologies to achieve desirable fuel mix is essential for improving the corporate sustainability of the japanese energy sector

photovoltaic power stations in germany and the united states a comparative study by data envelopment analysis abstract this study compares photovoltaic pv power stations between germany and the united states to examine which country more efficiently provides renewable energy in their usages for the comparative analysis this study utilizes data envelopment analysis dea as a methodology to evaluate the performance of pv power stations from the perspective of both solar and land usages a total of one hundred sixty pv power stations eighty in germany and eighty in the united states are used for this comparison the demand for sustainable energy and energy security has been rapidly increasing over the past decade because of concerns about environment and limited resources pv solutions are one of many renewable technologies that are being developed to satisfy a recent demand of electricity germany is the world s top installer and consumer of pv power and the united states is one of the top five nations germany leads the way in installed pv capacity even though the nation has less solar resources and land area due to limited solar resources low insolation and sunshine and land area the united states should have a clear advantage over germany however the empirical result of this study exhibits that pv power stations in germany operate more efficiently than those of the united states even if the latter has many solar and land advantages the surprising result indicates that the united states has room for improvement when it comes to utilizing solar and land resources and needs to reform the solar policy for such a purpose feed in tariff fit may be an effective energy policy at the state level in the united states because the fit provides investors such as utility companies and other types of energy firms with financial incentives to develop large pv power stations and generation facilities for other renewable energy it may be true that the fit is a powerful policy tool to promote pv and other renewable installation and support a reduction of an amount of greenhouse gases however the fit poses a large financial burden to consumers with a massive increase in renewable energy installation like in germany and spain therefore it is necessary for the united states to consider how to align a policy with a speed of technology innovation to balance between the benefit and the cost derived from the policy implementation on renewable energy in addition this study discusses policy issues regarding cost allocation due to fit among stakeholders related to the electric power industry at the end this study proposes a new type of wholesale electricity market that provides simultaneous trading on electricity and greenhouse gas emissions by fully utilizing modern computer science technology that exists in universities and national laboratories of the united states

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

dea radial measurement for environmental assessment and planning desirable procedures to evaluate fossil fuel power plants abstract energy policy depends on a proper use of methodology in guiding a large energy issue such as the global warming and climate change dea is one of such methodologies that are often used for preparing environmental policy which is closely linked to various energy issues unfortunately the use of dea applied to environmental policy is insufficient often misguiding policy makers and other individuals who are involved in energy issues this study provides three guidelines for a use of dea in preparing environmental assessment first it is important to prepare both primal and dual formulations to confirm whether information regarding all production factors i e inputs desirable and undesirable outputs is fully utilized in dea assessment second dea has model variations in radial and non radial measurements it is necessary for us to examine environmental issues by different models in order to avoid a methodological bias existing in those empirical studies finally dea environmental assessment needs to incorporate the concept of natural and managerial disposability the natural disposability indicates that a firm negatively adapts a regulation change on undesirable outputs in contrast the managerial disposability indicates that a firm positively adapts the regulation change because the firm considers the regulation change as a new business opportunity

the productivity and efficiency of the australian electricity supply industry australia s electricity supply industry has been through a period of reform over the last 10 years the purpose of this paper is to analyse the changes that have occurred to the australian electricity supply industry over the past 30 years in order to evaluate to what degree these reforms have improved the productivity and efficiency performance of the industry

behavior of the firm under regulatory constraint a recent article by akira takayama discusses an earlier paper by harvey averch and leland l johnson on fair rate of return regulation of public utilities although takayama p 255 agrees with averch and johnson s general conclusions that a firm will tend to increase its investment with the introduction of an active constraint on its rate of return he criticizes the a j argument as being confusing ambiguous and in error takayama then attempts a clarification and presents a new formulation which leads to the a j result quoted above this comment will discuss several of takayama s criticisms in addition to showing that the so called a j effect cannot be derived from the basic assumptions made by both averch and johnson and takayama 1 we will show that the very assumptions used to prove the a j effect by defining the region of x require an assumption that the a j effect exists in the first place

methodological comparison among radial non radial and intermediate approaches for dea environmental assessment abstract this study compares three dea approaches for environmental assessment all of which are designed to examine the level of simultaneous achievement on economic prosperity and environmental protection so measuring the degree of sustainability development dea standing for data envelopment analysis has been widely applied for performance assessment in the past five decades a new type of applications is referred to as dea environmental assessment and it measures the performance of many organizations that utilize inputs to produce not only desirable outputs e g electricity but also undesirable outputs e g co 2 in the previous studies dea based performance evaluation for environment assessment is methodologically classified into radial or non radial category recently a new intermediate approach analytically locating between the radial and non radial measures has been proposed as the third alternative a use of the intermediate approach has several unique features all of which cannot be found in the radial and non radial ones the new approach measures the degree of unified inefficiency on each production factor and determines the level of total unified inefficiency from the average of the sum of these inefficiency scores this study discusses the analytical features by comparing the intermediate approach with the radial and non radial ones the methodological comparison attempts to convey a message that dea is indeed an important methodology but not perfect rather it is an approximation approach to examine the performance of various organizations many dea applications on energy and environment often suffer from a methodological bias implying that different approaches produce different empirical results thus in guiding a large policy issue such as the global warming and climate change it is necessary for us to compare several different approaches e g models and concepts to derive a reliable empirical suggestion the importance of such a message is applicable to not only dea but also the other types of empirical research in natural and social sciences therefore this study discusses the methodological bias issue from the practicality of the three dea approaches in assessing various concerns on energy and environment

china s regional sustainability and diversified resource allocation dea environmental assessment on economic development and air pollution abstract environmental protection including the prevention of air pollution and health hazard materials such as pm2 5 and pm10 is now a very serious policy issue in china after attaining the rapid economic growth and development the pm stands for particular matter indicating the size of both solid particles and liquid droplets found in air unfortunately the economic development has produced a serious healthcare problem in not only china and other surrounding nations to enhance people s healthcare and appeal a good national image to the world china is recently looking for the new industrial and environmental policy direction to attain social sustainability in terms of economic development and environmental prevention to discuss policy implications on the new policy direction this study utilizes data envelopment analysis dea for assessment on its regional performance by incorporating pm2 5 and pm10 as undesirable outputs along with two disposability concepts i e natural disposability and managerial disposability no previous dea study has incorporated the amount of pm2 5 and pm10 in empirical investigation using a simulated data set for the period of 2013 2014 this study measures the efficiency of municipality cities under four different types of regional classifications the empirical results indicate that the chinese government should distribute its economic resources to cities which locate in the northwest region including lanzhou xining yinchuan and urumqi and reinforce more strict regulation on energy consumptions for environmental prevention in major cities e g beijing tianjin shanghai and chongqing the industrial policy change from the economic growth to the environment protection is essential for the future of china which is currently the second largest economic power in the world the environmental protection can enhance the china s image of contributing in economics industry and environmental protection to all other nations it can be envisioned that the new policy effort reduces the regional imbalance and increases the social sustainability in china the empirical findings and policy implications discussed in this study are applicable to not only china but also other industrial and developing nations and those are useful in guiding their industrial and environmental policy development

efficiency based rank assessment for electric power industry a combined use of data envelopment analysis dea and dea discriminant analysis da abstract this study discusses a combined use of dea data environment analysis and dea da discriminant analysis to determine the efficiency based rank of energy firms this type of performance evaluation is important because we often have a difficulty in accessing a large sample on energy firms to derive reliable empirical results the proposed approach is useful in dealing with such a limited number of energy firms often found in previous dea studies on energy industries in the world the proposed approach uses dea to classify energy firms into efficient and inefficient groups based upon their efficiency scores then it utilizes dea da to assess their efficiency scores and ranks in this stage we can find an adjusted efficiency score for each energy firm the proposed approach provides us with the following analytical capabilities all of which cannot be found in a conventional use of dea in assessing energy firms first the proposed dea approach can avoid zero in all multipliers on efficient energy firms by incorporating scsc strong complementary slackness condition so that it can handle an occurrence of multiple reference sets and multiple projections the dea result classifies all energy firms into efficient and inefficient groups second dea da applied to the two groups evaluates all energy firms by an industry wide evaluation not depending upon a limited number of efficient energy firms in a reference set as found in a conventional use of dea the analytical capability can reduce the number of efficient energy firms third the proposed approach can provide their efficiency based ranking scores finally we can conduct a rank sum test based upon their ranking scores to obtain a statistical inference as an application this study uses the proposed approach to examine the performance of japanese electric power industry we find two economic implications one of the two implications is that no major change has occurred in the operational performance of japanese electric power industry because of japanese sluggish economy from 2005 to 2009 the other implication indicates that there are strategic differences in the operation of japanese electric power firms after the liberalization

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

investor protection and corporate governance recent research has documented large differences among countries in ownership concentration in publicly traded firms in the breadth and depth of capital markets in dividend policies and in the access of firms to external finance a common element to the explanations of these differences is how well investors both shareholders and creditors are protected by law from expropriation by the managers and controlling shareholders of firms we describe the differences in laws and the effectiveness of their enforcement across countries discuss the possible origins of these differences summarize their consequences and assess potential strategies of corporate governance reform we argue that the legal approach is a more fruitful way to understand corporate governance and its reform than the conventional distinction between bank centered and market centered financial systems

evolution of bank efficiency in brazil a dea approach abstract this paper investigates cost technical and allocative efficiencies for brazilian banks in the recent period 2000 2007 we use data envelopment analysis dea to compute efficiency scores brazilian banks were found to have low levels of economic cost efficiency compared to banks in europe and in the us for the period with high macroeconomic volatility 2000 2002 the economic inefficiency in brazilian banks can be attributed mainly to technical inefficiency rather than allocative inefficiency state owned banks are significantly more cost efficient than foreign private domestic and private with foreign participation there is no evidence of differences in economic efficiency due to type of activity and bank size these results may provide some useful guidance for financial regulators and bank managers

investment strategy for sustainable society by development of regional economies and prevention of industrial pollutions in japanese manufacturing sectors abstract a balance between industrial pollution prevention and economic growth becomes a world wide issue to develop a sustainable society in many industrial nations to discuss the issue this study proposes a new use of dea environmental assessment to determine how to effectively allocate capital for developing regional industries the amount of capital is used to invest for technology innovation for both local economic growth and environmental protection in this study the proposed approach separates outputs into desirable and undesirable categories inputs are also separated into two categories one of which indicates an amount of investment on capital assets the other category is used for production activities the proposed approach unifies them by two disposability concepts this study has evaluated the performance of manufacturing industries in 47 prefectures local government units in japan by unified efficiency under natural disposability uen unified efficiency under managerial disposability uem and unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability uenm the uenm is further separated into its two cases with and without a possible occurrence on desirable congestion or technology innovation on undesirable outputs this study has empirically confirmed that japanese manufacturing industries need to make their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution substances by investing in technology innovation furthermore most of economic activities are currently located at metropolitan regions e g tokyo in japan to develop a sustainable society japan needs to allocate capital into regions with a high level of investment effectiveness by shifting the manufacturing industries from the metropolitan regions to much promising local areas identified in this study such a shift along with technology innovation makes it possible to reduce air pollutions in the entire japan by balancing economic growth and pollution prevention this empirical study confirms that the proposed approach is useful in both guiding regional planning and developing a sustainable society it is easily envisioned that the proposed approach is useful for not only japan but also the other industrial and developing nations

dea environmental assessment in time horizon radial approach for malmquist index measurement on petroleum companies abstract the climate change and various pollutions have been influencing our societies and economies the environmental assessment to be discussed in this study is increasingly important because it serves as an initial step toward pollution prevention corporate leaders policy makers researchers and individuals who are interested in environmental protection have been paying attention to the assessment so that they can prepare policy suggestions on the global warming and climate change as a methodology for the assessment this study proposes a use of data environment analysis dea in a time horizon most of data sets on the climate change are sampled in a time series where the performance of organizations fluctuates every moment in applying the dea environmental assessment to such a data set it is necessary for us to classify outputs into desirable e g oil production and undesirable e g co 2 emission categories because all organizations usually produce not only desirable but also undesirable outputs as a result of their economic activities to unify the two different types of outputs this study incorporates the concept of natural and managerial disposability into the computational framework of dea and extends them into a time horizon for the research purpose this study incorporates malmquist index into the proposed dea environmental assessment to examine an occurrence of a frontier shift among multiple periods the frontier shift indicates a technology progress and or managerial innovation during an observed period the index is further separated into four subcomponents in a time horizon these subcomponents are differently expressed under the natural and managerial disposability thus eight different subcomponents on the malmquist index are proposed to measure the frontier shift as an application this study uses the proposed dea approach to examine whether the frontier shift due to technology progress occurs or not in the petroleum industry from 2005 to 2009 our empirical study finds that the industry has not exhibited any major frontier shift under natural disposability but showing a considerable frontier shift under managerial disposability in other words the petroleum firms have improved their environmental performance by eco technology to reduce an amount of co 2 emission during the observed annual periods

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

dea environmental assessment in a time horizon malmquist index on fuel mix electricity and co2 of industrial nations abstract climate change and global warming become a major policy issue in the world economic activities produce not only desirable outputs e g electricity but also undesirable outputs e g co 2 emission the important policy issue is how each nation can balance between economic development and environmental protection to attain a sustainable society in attaining the sustainable society environmental assessment is increasingly important because it can serve as an initial step toward the green growth of each nation for the purpose this study proposes a new use of dea data environment analysis for environmental assessment in a time horizon the proposed use of dea incorporates malmquist index to examine the degree of a frontier shift among multiple periods the frontier shift indicates a technology progress and or managerial innovation during an observed period the index is conceptually separated into six subcomponents which are further divided into twelve different subcomponents six subcomponents two disposability concepts under the natural and managerial disposability in the index measurement it is necessary for us to consider a frontier crossover among different periods because technology innovation usually has a time lag until it really appears as an empirical application this study utilizes the proposed approach to identify the relationship among fuel mix electricity and co 2 of ten industrial nations this study finds three important empirical findings first there is a time lag in technology innovation on electricity generation and co 2 emission reduction consequently it is necessary to consider the existence of a frontier crossover in assessing the electric power industry second nuclear generation as found in france as well as hydro and renewable energy as found in netherlands are important for the development of a sustainable society although the former is associated with a very high level of risk and the latter has a limited generation capacity finally the electric power industry has been making a corporate effort to reduce the amount of co 2 emission by utilizing nuclear and renewable energy

rationality of energy efficiency improvement targets under the pat scheme in india a case of thermal power plants abstract the market based perform achieve and trade scheme was introduced in india to enhance the energy efficiency of energy intensive sectors and for thermal power plants by reducing their specific energy consumption within the framework of a tradable certificate scheme international experience suggests that effectiveness of such schemes is greatly influenced by the assigned targets of the obligated units setting rational targets is thus a key aspect of successful implementation of the scheme in the present study we examine the rationality of the targets set for the power sector of india based on comparing it with energy saving potential of the plants and the targets assigned to the respective plants data envelopment analysis models are used to determine relative efficiency and energy saving potential the study results indicate that in most cases i the targets are much less than the actual potentials of the thermal power sector ii there exist substantial inefficiencies within the system in both energy use and managerial dexterity and iii if the sector realizes its full potential then the energy saving certificate market may witness a surplus of 4 7 million certificates on account of thermal power sector alone

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

dea efficiency for the determination of the electric power distribution added value the application of data envelopment analysis methodology is formulated as a tool to determine the distribution added value required in the tariff fixation processes of electrical power distribution that use the concept of model firm as a regulatory basis in order to increase the reliability of the obtained results a bootstrap technique is applied its application is illustrated within the framework of the latest regulatory process in chile

dea environmental assessment on us petroleum industry non radial approach with translation invariance in time horizon abstract this study empirically assesses the performance of the petroleum industry focusing upon independent companies in the united states us for the empirical study we use the data envelopment analysis dea that has been widely used for environmental assessment and performance measurement the conventional use of dea requests that all observations in the data set should be positive prohibiting an occurrence of zero and or negative values the requirement of non negative value is inconsistent with the reality of us petroleum industry because many oil firms recently experience negative shocks in financial performance to overcome the obstacle this study discusses the property of translation invariance under undesirable congestion e g capacity limit in the transportation pipeline network and desirable congestion e g green technology innovation based on the non radial models the property implies that the unified efficiency measure should be not influenced even if production factors are shifted toward the same direction by adding or subtracting a specific real number the property makes it possible that we can evaluate the performance of firms whose production factors contain zero and or negative values this study is empirically concerned with practical implications of translation invariance from energy and environmental perspectives in addition this study examines the proposed environmental assessment in a time horizon for the purpose this study uses window analysis to examine an efficiency change along with a time shift our empirical investigation finds the following three implications first under the natural disposability the oil firms efficiency growth rates have become less than unity implying the industry wide difficulty or inability to cut back their drilling and production operations second all firms have been under regulatory and stakeholder pressures on air pollution therefore the efficiency growth rates under managerial disposability have not exhibited a major change during the observed annual periods finally such implications are statistically reconfirmed by regression analysis that examines how the change of energy price influences unified efficiencies under natural and managerial disposability an exception can be found in the natural disposability where energy prices influence their efficiency growths thus an increase in energy prices is important in maintaining a high level of efficiency growths in the us petroleum industry

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

an assessment of the efficiency of spanish courts using dea the objective is to provide a measure of technical efficiency of the administrative litigation division of the spanish high courts the concept of efficiency to be measured and the most adequate technique for carrying out the efficiency analysis are selected by considering the specific characteristics of public production the analysis is undertaken by using data envelopment analysis dea and various homogeneity tests returns to scale and restrictions on weights are applied in order to ensure a correct comparison between courts some additional extensions to the analysis such as the calculus of efficient delays and an approximation to the calculus of global efficiency are carried out

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

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