what are the effects of different tax policies on china s coal fired power generation industry an empirical research from a network slacks based measure perspective abstract data envelopment analysis dea has been widely applied to evaluate performance in the power generation industry nevertheless most studies view the production system as a black box few studies attempt to deal with the case of china s thermal power generation industry in the framework of network dea separating the overall power generation process into two internal stages the production stage and the pollutant abatement stage with the pollutant emissions as intermediate products this paper employs a network slacks based measure sbm model to research the production efficiency and environmental efficiency of china s coal fired power generation industry from 2006 to 2010 under two different tax policies these two tax policies are the pollution tax policy to negatively penalize for emissions of pollutants and the tax deductions or exemptions policy to positively encourage environmental protection the empirical results show that the effect of compulsory measures was better than that of self motivation measures for china s environmental protection in this observation period another important finding is that the year 2008 was a turning point in the five years statistical analysis shows that the effects of the two different policies were statistically independent

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

measuring ecological efficiency with data envelopment analysis dea abstract the measurement of ecological efficiency provides some important information for the companies environmental management ecological efficiency is usually measured by comparing environmental performance indicators data envelopment analysis dea shows a high potential to support such comparisons as no explicit weights are needed to aggregate the indicators in general dea assumes that inputs and outputs are goods but from an ecological perspective also bads have to be considered in the literature bads are treated in different and sometimes arbitrarily chosen ways this article aims at the systematic derivation of ecologically extended dea models starting from the assumptions of dea in production theory and activity analysis a generalisation of basic dea models is derived by incorporating a multi dimensional value function f extended preference structures can be considered by different specifications of f e g specifications for ecologically motivated applications of dea

environmental efficiency analysis of power industry in china based on an entropy sbm model chinese national natural science fund 71073040 710201139 71273075 humanities and social science fund of the ministry of education 09yjc790061

the effects of electricity reforms on productivity and efficiency of china s fossil fired power plants an empirical analysis abstract this paper investigates the effects of electricity reforms on productivity and efficiency of china s generation plants based on the third industrial census data and the first economic census data partial factor productivity pfp analysis indicates that the productivity improvements in labor and capital inputs associated with the reforms are approximately 26 and 45 respectively the effect of the reforms on fuel expense is weakly significant but there is evidence of significant productivity improvement in fuel usage further total factor productivity tfp analysis shows that the efficiency gain from the reforms is still significant when the substitution effect of labor and capital inputs are considered though the magnitude is much lower than that of the pfp analysis the effect of the reforms on technical efficiency becomes weakly significant when fuel expense is further included in tfp analysis but a significant positive effect is expected if fuel input is measured in physical quantity

the politics of foreign direct investment into developing countries increasing fdi through international trade agreements the flow of foreign direct investment into developing countries varies greatly across countries and over time the political factors that affect these flows are not well understood focusing on the relationship between trade and investment we argue that international trade agreements gatt wto and preferential trade agreements ptas provide mechanisms for making commitments to foreign investors about the treatment of their assets thus reassuring investors and increasing investment these international commitments are more credible than domestic policy choices because reneging on them is more costly statistical analyses for 122 developing countries from 1970 to 2000 support this argument developing countries that belong to the wto and participate in more ptas experience greater fdi inflows than otherwise controlling for many factors including domestic policy preferences and taking into account possible endogeneity joining international trade agreements allows developing countries to attract more fdi and thus increase economic growth

the asset growth effect insights from international equity markets abstract firms with higher asset growth rates subsequently experience lower stock returns in international equity markets consistent with the u s evidence this negative effect of asset growth on returns is stronger in more developed capital markets and markets where stocks are more efficiently priced but is unrelated to country characteristics representing limits to arbitrage investor protection and accounting quality the evidence suggests that the cross sectional relation between asset growth and stock return is more likely due to an optimal investment effect than due to overinvestment market timing or other forms of mispricing

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

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

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

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

eco efficiency change in power plants using a slacks based measure for the meta frontier malmquist luenberger productivity index abstract malmquist luenberger index is a popular index deployed for evaluating eco efficiency and productivity change over a certain period when both desirable and undesirable factors are jointly produced in some production processes however conventional data envelopment analysis dea models used for computing this index are unable to distinguish the various technologies employed by the decision making units when heterogeneity exists in the technology the meta frontier malmquist luenberger approach is adopted to evaluate eco efficiency and productivity change over a period when undesirable outputs are incorporated in the analysis of efficiency in this paper a new slacks based dea measure is developed and used to compute the meta frontier malmquist luenberger productivity index this approach is then deployed to evaluate 48 iranian thermal power plants productivity change in three different categories steam gas and combined cycle over an eight year period of restructuring in the power industry this technique enables the calculation of eco efficiency change of thermal power plants operating under different technologies as well as the technology gap ratios and measures the extent to which the efficiency frontiers of individual categories of power plants deviate from the meta frontier the results reveal that the last years of the restructuring period saw a greater rate of productivity growth compared to the initial years and evidence of significant eco efficiency improvements over the period in all the three types of the thermal power plants finally it is expected that the findings in this study aid policy makers and power industry regulators in developing sustainable energy policies towards environmental protection and planning power plant operations

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

estimating the environmental efficiency and marginal co2 abatement cost of coal fired power plants in china abstract we estimate the environmental efficiency reduction potential and marginal abatement cost of carbon dioxide co2 emissions from coal fired power plants in china using a novel plant level dataset derived from the first and second waves of the national economic survey which were implemented in 2004 and 2008 respectively the results indicate that there are large opportunities for co2 emissions reduction in china s coal fired power plants given that all power plants operate fully efficiently china s co2 emissions in 2004 and 2008 could have been reduced by 52 and 70 respectively accompanied by an expansion in electricity output in other words the opportunities for double dividend exist in 2004 the average marginal abatement cost of co2 emissions for china s power plants was approximately 955 yuan ton whereas in 2008 the cost increased to 1142 yuan ton the empirical analyses show that subsidies from the government can reduce environmental inefficiency but the subsidies significantly increase the shadow price of the power plants older and larger power plants have a lower environmental efficiency and marginal co2 abatement cost the ratio of coal consumption negatively affects the environmental efficiencies of power plants

an activity analysis model of the environmental performance of firms application to fossil fuel fired electric utilities the productivity of firms when some outputs pollution are undesirable has been studied in the literature for some time in this paper we introduce an environmental performance indicator based on the decomposition of overall factor productivity into a pollution index and an input output efficiency index this indicator is compared to the more conventional jaggi and freedman 1992 model results are given for illustrative purposes using data from u s fossil fuel fired electric utilities the rankings of the utilities obtained with the two models show significant divergence which is due to the different ways in which the undesirable outputs are dealt with as well as due to the different possible tradeoffs between the pollutants released into the atmosphere and the resources used as inputs

dea approach for unified efficiency measurement assessment of japanese fossil fuel power generation this study discusses a new dea data envelopment analysis approach to measure the unified operational and environmental efficiency of energy firms it is widely known that they produce not only desirable good outputs e g electricity but also undesirable bad outputs e g co2 as a result of their plant operations the proposed approach incorporates an output separation desirable and undesirable outputs for the performance evaluation of energy firms in addition to the output separation this study separates inputs into energy and non energy inputs consequently the proposed approach incorporates not only the output separation but also the input separation within a computational framework of dea non radial measurement this study compares the proposed approach with other previous dea approaches used for the performance evaluation of energy firms after the methodological comparison this study applies the proposed approach for measuring the unified efficiency of japanese fossil fuel power generation this empirical study confirms that the implementation of kyoto protocol 2005 has not been effective on the unified efficiency of japanese fossil fuel power generation during the observed period 2004 2008 although the empirical result is inconsistent with the current japanese environmental policy under kyoto protocol it contains policy implications for guiding the future direction of japanese environmental policy on the electric power industry

decoupling china s carbon emissions increase from economic growth an economic analysis and policy implications as the world s second largest carbon emitter china has long been criticized as a free rider benefiting from other countries efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but not taking responsibility for its own emissions china has been singled out as one of the major targets at the subsequent negotiations after the kyoto meeting bq analyzing the historical contributions of interfuel switching energy conservation economic growth and population expansion to china s co2 emissions during 1980 97 this article clearly demonstrates that the above criticism is unjustified moreover given the fact that the role of china is an issue of perennial concern at the international climate change negotiations the article envisions some efforts and commitments that could be expected from china until its per capita income catches lip with the level of middle developed countries by emphasizing the it win win strategies these efforts and commitments are unlikely to jeopardize china s economic development and at the same time would give the country more leverage at the international climate change negotiations subsequent to the buenos sires meeting c 2000 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

asset growth anomaly in europe do profits and losses matter abstract this paper investigates whether the well documented asset growth effect on stock returns exists across both profit and loss firms in european capital markets we find that the asset growth anomaly is more pronounced across loss firms and is significantly dampened by the inclusion of profit firms in the sample the raw and abnormal returns earned from a hedge strategy on balance sheet growth for loss firms are almost two times higher than the respective returns for profit firms our evidence casts doubt on a risk based explanation thereby lending credence to the suggestion that the asset growth effect is attributable to mispricing

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

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

an empirical analysis of the co2 shadow price in chinese thermal power enterprises abstract this paper estimates the shadow price of co2 and explores its determinants for thermal power enterprises in china using a parametric quadratic directional distance function we evaluate the inefficiency and shadow price of co2 for 124 power enterprises in 2004 applying deterministic and econometric methods a regression analysis is undertaken to examine the factors that drive shadow prices our results indicate that there are large inefficiencies in terms of electricity production and co2 emissions the shadow price is a negative function of firm size age and coal share and is positively correlated with the technology level this correlation between shadow prices and its determinants is not sensitive to changing assumptions regarding directional vectors although such changes do alter the distribution of shadow prices the large variation witnessed in shadow prices across power enterprises argues in favor of market based regulation such as an emissions trading system as opposed to the command and control regulation currently used in china to minimize overall abatement cost

constructing polities and markets an institutionalist account of european integration as institutions and governance structures develop in modern markets they tend to feed back onto economic activity through such feedback loops market and political arenas can develop symbiotically into relatively coherent fields that gradually embed actors orientations and activities using these insights this article develops and tests a theory of european integration focusing on the case of the european community the first pillar of the european union traders organized interests courts and the ec s policy making organs over time have produced a self sustaining causal system that has driven the construction of the european market and polity the generality of this explanation to a sociology of markets and polity building projects is discussed in the conclusion

efficiency evaluation of china s provincial power systems based on the dynamic network slacks based measure model abstract a power system contains generation transmission and distribution divisions policy reforms and management mechanisms may affect the environmental efficiency of certain divisions or the integrated power system this study applied the dynamic network slacks based measure dnsbm model to analyze the environmental efficiency of both the power systems and their divisions of provincial administrative areas in china and investigated the effects of the external environmental factors it employed scenario analysis to further explore the feasibility of separating the distribution from the transmission division the results indicate that 1 the dnsbm model takes the internal structure of the power system into account and provides a new perspective to seek the sources of the system and division efficiencies 2 customer density and energy consumption intensity have significant impacts on the system and division efficiencies while the power generation structure only affects the environmental efficiency of the generation division 3 the scenario analysis shows that the policy of separating power plants from grids improved the system efficiency to which the improvement in generation division is the main contributor and separating distribution from transmission may have great potential for enhancing the efficiencies of power systems

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

marginal abatement costs of carbon dioxide emissions in china a parametric analysis this paper investigates the technical inefficiency shadow price and substitution elasticity of hbox co 2 emissions of china based on a provincial panel for 2001 2010 using linear programming to calculate a quadratic parameterized directional output distance function we show that china s technical inefficiency increases over the period implying further scope for hbox co 2 emissions reduction in the medium and longer term at best by 4 5 and 4 9 respectively our results notwithstanding regional differences highlight increases in the shadow price of hbox co 2 abatement 1 000 yuan ton in 2001 to 2 100 yuan ton in 2010 additionally increasingly steep substitution elasticity highlights the difficult reality of reducing china s hbox co 2 emissions

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

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

the determinants of cross border equity flows abstract we explore a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross border equity flows between 14 countries 1989 1996 we show that a gravity model explains international transactions in financial assets at least as well as goods trade transactions gross transaction flows depend on market size in source and destination country as well as trading costs in which both information and the transaction technology play a role distance proxies some information costs and other variables explicitly represent information transmission an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors and the efficiency of transactions the geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions while there is weak support in our data for the diversification motive once we control for the informational friction we broaden the scope of our results by presenting some evidence linking the results on equity transactions to equity holdings

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

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

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

momentum in global equity markets in times of troubles does the economic state matter this paper investigates the profitability of momentum based trading strategies pursued during the most recent economic downturns in global equity markets in contrast to previous studies it reveals that such strategies generated statistically significant negative returns during the most recent recessions these momentum crashes happen during market reversals following exceptionally large market declines as occurred in march and april 2009

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

the shadow prices of co2 and so2 for chinese coal fired power plants a partial frontier approach abstract shadow prices are widely employed in guiding environmental policies this paper contributes to the literature by developing a novel partial frontier approach for estimating shadow prices the proposed method is advanced in handling outliers and provides a precise estimation of the marginal rate of substitution along the production frontier to cope with the different disposability characteristics of undesirable emissions so2 is treated as an environmental input that is strongly disposable because most different undesirable outputs are jointly reduced this study is the first to use directional derivatives instead of partial derivatives and proposes a new separation method that separates individual directional shadow price from the cost of joint reduction of multiple undesirable outputs we apply the proposed method to a sample of 93 coal fired power plants covering six years the estimated average shadow prices of co2 and so2 are 69 tonne and 2525 tonne under the newly developed partial frontiers when assuming some undesirable output to be strongly disposable both shadow prices fall 20 32 tonne and 1018 23 tonne the present paper suggests the estimated shadow prices will be much different across different levels of disposability the cost of joint reduction is calculated as 91 05 unit given the current production level which leads to a directional shadow price for the two undesirable outputs of 91 32 tonne and 1250 06 tonne the estimated shadow prices for both undesirable outputs dispersed widely under the partial frontiers spatial distribution of estimated shadow prices shows that coastal provinces and municipalities have higher co2 shadow prices but lower so2 shadow prices whereas the northeast provinces are the opposite the co2 shadow price is comparatively stable over the study period while the so2 shadow price fluctuates policy implications are discussed

measuring the efficiency of grid companies in china a bootstrapping non parametric meta frontier approach abstract the unbundling policy reform of power industry has become a worldwide trend since 1980s there are quite many studies focusing on the efficiency changes of transmission and distribution sectors in european and latin american countries while few reports on china s issues have been found this paper employs a nonparametric frontier estimation combined with meta frontier and bootstrapping method to measure the productive efficiency and changes in the decomposition index for china s 31 grid companies from 2004 to 2013 in addition it further employs tobit regression model to analyze the influences of relevant policies and heterogeneity factors such as natural conditions and economic development the results indicate that the grouping approach extends the application of non parametric data envelopment analysis which may decrease the assumption of homogeneity for the decision making units and provide better efficiency estimates by increasing the credibility of the evaluation results overall productive efficiency increased during the whole study period with technology progress the main contributor to this improvement efficiency trends fluctuated with changes in economic development and power supply situation and the economics and customer density had positive effects on productive efficiency while the influence of clean power proportion is negative

globalization pressures and the state the worldwide spread of central bank independence the authors examine the impact of globalization on state structures in the specific instance of the central bank following the world system world society and neoinstitutional perspectives in sociology they assume that states are in cultural political and economic competition with each other thereby seeking to maintain their position and status frequently by adopting organizational forms or practices that make them isomorphic with their environment the authors predict that countries boost the independence of their central bank from the political power as their exposure to foreign trade investment and multilateral lending increases they also model the cross national dynamic process of diffusion of central bank independence by examining the impact of cohesive and role equivalent trade relationships between countries they find support for their hypotheses with information on 71 countries between 1990 and 2000

spanning the institutional abyss the intergovernmental network and the governance of foreign direct investment global economic transactions such as foreign direct investment fdi must extend over an institutional abyss between the jurisdiction and therefore protection of the states involved intergovernmental organizations igos represent an important attempt to span this abyss the authors use a network approach to demonstrate that the connections between two countries through joint membership in the same igos are associated with a large positive influence on the fdi that flows between them moreover they show that this effect occurs not only in the case of connections through economic igos but also through those with social and cultural mandates this demonstrates that relational governance is important and feasible in the global context even for the most risky transactions the authors also examine the interdependence between the igo network and the domestic institutions of states social and cultural igo connections do more and economic igo connections less to increase fdi when the target country is mo

measuring environmental efficiency of industry a case study of thermal power generation in india technical and environmental efficiency of some coal fired thermal power plants in india is estimated using a methodology that accounts for firm s efforts to increase the production of good output and reduce pollution with the given resources and technology the methodology used is directional output distance function estimates of firm specific shadow prices of pollutants bad outputs and elasticity of substitution between good and bad outputs are also obtained the technical and environmental inefficiency of a representative firm is estimated as 0 06 implying that the thermal power generating industry in andhra pradesh state of india could increase production of electricity by 6 while decreasing generation of pollution by 6 this result shows that there are incentives or win win opportunities for the firms to voluntarily comply with the environmental regulation it is found that there is a significant variation in marginal cost of pollution abatement or shadow prices of bad outputs across the firms and an increasing marginal cost of pollution abatement with respect to pollution reduction by the firms this result calls for the use of economic instruments like pollution taxes instead of command and control regulation used currently in india to reduce air pollution

running out of steam a political incentive perspective of fdi inflows in china drawing on the sociological literature of state bureaucracy we develop a political incentive perspective on fdi inflows we argue that political term as a core feature of career advancement in state bureaucracy influences the incentives of newly appointed government officials and in turn their efforts toward achieving the state s goal of attracting fdi due to the mandatory retirement age which limits the career advancement officials in their first terms perceive that they have better chances of promotion and hence have stronger incentives to work toward advancement than those continuing to serve in the current position for the following term we test this argument by examining chinese city government leaders and fdi inflows in their cities from 2003 to 2010 using a difference in differences design the results show that first term leaders who are newly appointed after political turnover attract more fdi inflows than continuing leaders the difference is smaller when the new leaders are close to retirement but greater if they are appointed to cities with low prior gdp performance this study offers a new perspective on intra country fdi variations and extends the literature on the role of political institutions by investigating the political incentives of government officials

the intergovernmental network of world trade igo connectedness governance and embeddedness membership in certain intergovernmental organizations igos such as the world trade organization has long been argued to stimulate trade yet evidence linking igos to trade is mixed the authors argue that identifying the influence of igos requires attention not only to the institutions igos enact but also to the network through which they enact them this approach allows them to demonstrate that trade between two countries increases by an average of 58 with every doubling of the strength of igo connection between the countries they also contribute to debates regarding the mechanisms through which structural relationships influence economic behavior by showing that substantial trade benefits occur not only through economic igos but also through igos that were formed for social and cultural purposes and that connections through igos that are organizationally strong have more impact than those through minimalist igos

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

marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions in the thermal power sector a regional empirical analysis from china abstract quantifying marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions are beneficial to estimate mitigation potentials and costs of china s regional thermal power sector based on the panel data of 30 provinces from 2004 to 2013 this study estimates the technical efficiency reduction potential and marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions from the thermal power sector in china using a parametric quadratic directional output distance function a regression analysis is undertaken to identify the factors that drive marginal abatement costs the main results are 1 the mean value of directional output distance function in china s thermal power sector is 0 0449 indicating that inefficient production of chinese thermal power sector accounts for 4 49 co2 emissions could be mitigated by accumulated 1 22 billion ton in the past ten year which is approximate 4 49 of total co2 emissions 2 the national weighted average marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions are 316 51 yuan ton which is far higher than carbon price in the current ets emission trading system pilots in china implying that carbon price does not inflect supply and demand of carbon allowance 3 the regression results show that the marginal abatement costs positively connect with regional power scale namely a 1 increase in power scale will result in a 13 8 increase technology level coal supply and power structure are negatively correlated with marginal abatement costs namely a 1 increase in technology level coal supply and power structure will result respectively in a 30 41 4 38 and 77 7 decrease

examining the cost efficiency of chinese hydroelectric companies using a finite mixture model this paper evaluates the operational activities of chinese hydroelectric power companies over the period 2000 2010 using a finite mixture model that controls for unobserved heterogeneity in so doing a stochastic frontier latent class model which allows for the existence of different technologies is adopted to estimate cost frontiers this procedure not only enables us to identify different groups among the hydro power companies analysed but also permits the analysis of their cost efficiency the main result is that three groups are identified in the sample each equipped with different technologies suggesting that distinct business strategies need to be adapted to the characteristics of china s hydro power companies some managerial implications are developed

the technology gap and efficiency measure in wec countries application of the hybrid meta frontier model this study develops the hybrid meta frontier dea model for which inputs are distinguished into radial inputs that change proportionally and non radial inputs that change non proportionally in order to measure the technical efficiency and technology gap ratios tgr of four different regions asia africa america and europe this paper selects 87 countries that are members of the world energy council from 2005 to 2007 the input variables are industry and population while the output variances are gross domestic product gdp and the amount of fossil fuel co2 emissions the result shows that countries efficiency ranking among their own region presents more implied volatility in view of the technology gap ratio europe is the most efficient of any region but during the same period asia has a lower efficiency than other regions finally regions with higher industry or gdp might not have higher efficiency from 2005 to 2007 and higher co2 emissions or population also might not mean lower efficiency for other regions in addition brazil is not oecd member but it is higher efficiency than other oecd members in emerging countries case oecd countries are better efficiency than non oecd countries and europe is higher than asia to control co2 emissions if non oecd countries or asia countries could reach the best efficiency score they should try to control co2 emissions

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

the global rise of democracy a network account we examine the influence of an interstate network created by intergovernmental organizations igos on the global diffusion of democracy we propose that igos facilitate democracy s diffusion by transmitting information between member states and by interpreting that information according to prevailing norms in the world society where democracy is viewed as the legitimate form of government we employ a network autocorrelation model to track changes in democracy among all of the world s countries from 1815 to 2000 we find that democracy does diffuse through the igo network and that the influence of democratic countries is stronger than that of undemocratic countries evidence indicates that the igo network serves as a basis for normative diffusion this is an important contribution to sociological accounts of globalization which tend to emphasize diffusion divorced from network structure or diffusion dependent on the coercive influence of a small set of international organizations

the information content of losses abstract this study hypothesizes that because shareholders have a liquidation option losses are not expected to perpetuate they are thus less informative than profits about the firm s future prospects the results are consistent with the hypothesis they also show that the documented increase in the earnings response coefficent as the cumulation period increases appears to be due exclusively to the effect of losses the liquidation option effect extends to profitable cases where earnings are low enough to make the option attractive alternating explanations for the low informativeness of losses such as mean reversal of earnings are not supported by the tests

green efficiency and environmental subsidy evidence from thermal power firms in china abstract to achieve green development ample environmental subsidies have been invested into many energy intensive firms such as thermal power firms in china investigations of the effects of this kind of subsidy can help to provide specific and important implications for ongoing regulations unlike previous studies on the national regional or sectoral level this paper measures green efficiency and its compositions of thermal power firms and studies the impact of environmental subsidies on green efficiency by using the classical slacks based measure and tobit model the results show that the average green efficiency ranges from 0 509 to 0 663 during 2010 2015 which is much lower than the general efficiency the green scale efficiency is the main reason for the low green efficiency thus indicating large room for improvement environmental subsidies negatively affect green efficiency and its decompositions from 2010 to 2013 the negative effect becomes weak and insignificant in 2014 and the environmental subsidies start to significantly promote green efficiency and its decompositions in 2015 according to our findings some implications relating to improving green scale efficiency increasing the intensity of environmental subsidies to firms and strengthening their supervision are proposed

environmentally sensitive productivity growth a global analysis using malmquist luenberger index abstract we examine conventional and environmentally sensitive total factor productivity tfp in 41 developed and developing countries over the period of 1971 to 1992 due to the non availability of reliable input and co 2 emissions price data the study uses directional distance function to derive malmquist luenberger ml productivity index the index allows us to decompose the tfp into measures of technical and efficiency changes dea is used to compute the directional distance functions we find that tfp index value is not different when we account for the co 2 emissions relative to the situation when they are freely disposable but for the components of tfp change technical and efficiency changes the null hypothesis of whether the indexes are the same under two different scenarios cannot be accepted issues of catch up and convergence or in some cases possible divergence in productivity are examined within a global framework the paper also studies the impact of openness on conventional and environmentally sensitive measures of productivity

total factor energy efficiency of coal consumption an empirical analysis of china s energy intensive industries abstract improvement of coal consumption efficiency is very important both for china in solving its problems of energy security and environmental pollution and for the world in addressing the issue of greenhouse gas emissions using a total factor framework this paper employs a data envelopment analysis dea approach to evaluate the coal consumption efficiency of six energy intensive sub industries in china in 2015 coal consumption efficiency is factorized into economic efficiency and environmental efficiency with sulfur dioxide nitrogen oxide and industrial smoke dust and soot emissions treated as undesirable outputs of energy consumptions the results show the following 1 of the six energy intensive sub industries studied two exhibit both dea effective coal economic efficiency and coal environmental efficiency coal economic efficiency is found to be greater than coal environmental efficiency indicating that the benefits of economic efficiency have masked the negative effects of the environmental impact china should therefore pay more attention to the clean utilization of coal 2 low environmental efficiency mainly resulted from the joint effects of pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency therefore enterprises in these industries must engage in management efforts to improve their ability to manage large enterprises 3 the energy intensive industries characterized by coal environmental efficiency that failed to achieve pure technological effectiveness all exhibited input redundancy or output inadequacy of varying degrees while showing a potential for energy conservation and emissions reductions

power industry restructuring and eco efficiency changes a new slacks based model in malmquist luenberger index measurement measuring variations in efficiency and its extension eco efficiency during a restructuring period in different industries has always been a point of interest for regulators and policy makers this paper assesses the impacts of restructuring of procurement in the iranian power industry on the performance of power plants we introduce a new slacks based model for malmquist luenberger ml index measurement and apply it to the power plants to calculate the efficiency eco efficiency and technological changes over the 8 year period 2003 2010 of restructuring in the power industry the results reveal that although the restructuring had different effects on the individual power plants the overall growth in the eco efficiency of the sector was mainly due to advances in pure technology we also assess the correlation between efficiency and eco efficiency of the power plants which indicates a close relationship between these two steps thus lending support to the incorporation of environmental factors in efficiency analysis

sulfur dioxide emission reduction of power plants in china current policies and implications abstract electricity generation by conventional fossil fuel power plants have caused severe environmental problems worldwide besides greenhouse gas emissions which has global impacts on the climate there are also pollutant emissions like sulfur dioxide which endanger the local environment in particular for developing countries who often highly rely on coal for power generation due to their resource endowment and the competitive costs of coal the issue of environment pollution caused by coal fired power plants is getting increasingly severe therefore various solutions should be combined and implemented to address the issue including environmental regulation and economic and financial incentives this study conducted an industry survey in 7 coal fired power plants in china to collect detailed data in the field to examine the costs and benefits of flue gas desulfurization currently coal fired power plants in china which install and properly operate flue gas desulfurization equipment can receive 15 yuan mwh premium tariff on top of their on grid tariffs however this study shows that this incentive is insufficient to cover the flue gas desulfurization costs of most of the sample plants more solutions both regulatory and market based should be considered to address this issue firstly under china s current regulated power plants dispatch scheme allocating generation hour based on the pollutant emission would provide strong incentive for sulfur dioxide mitigation secondly it is suggested to provide more supportive financial environment for flue gas desulfurization industry by fiscal supports diverse financing accesses and innovation financial and business models thirdly more environmental regulation tools such as emission cap and emission discharge fees should be set properly and examined carefully to optimize their impacts on economy society and environment finally the analysis and results of this study can also be applied in other fields such as denitration and dedusting of coal fired power plants

marginal abatement costs of carbon dioxide emissions and its influencing factors a global perspective abstract reducing co 2 emissions has become a major and urgent environmental goal worldwide in this paper we sample the data of 41 regions including 165 countries from 2000 to 2014 and adopt a gravity model to obtain an overview of the global flows of co 2 emissions energy consumption the global economy and capital stock since the beginning of the 21st century we then investigate global technical efficiency reduction potential shadow prices and factors influencing the marginal abatement costs of co 2 emissions based on a quadratic directional output distance function the empirical results show the following 1 the global centres of gravity for co 2 emissions energy consumption and capital stock have accelerated their shift to the asian inland in the 21st century but the global centre of gravity for the economy did not show the same trend 2 global technical inefficiency demonstrates a u shape with a turning point in 2007 average annual total global co 2 emissions could be reduced by 4482 28 mt and the global marginal abatement costs of co 2 emissions are approximately 673 74 697 73 usd t 3 the relationship between economic development and marginal abatement costs is represented by a u shaped curve the world is currently in the climbing phase of this curve implying that controlling co 2 emissions is becoming more costly moreover energy structure industrial structure and co 2 emissions are negatively correlated with marginal abatement costs finally the financial crisis has had a significant effect on marginal abatement costs

how energy technology innovation affects transition of coal resource based economy in china abstract the aim of this research paper is to investigate factors and mechanisms that may facilitate the transition from coal resource based economy to sustainability based on the energy technology innovation theory factors that may influence the transition of coal resource based economy were categorized into four types including innovation policy innovation input innovation ability and innovation organization hypotheses were proposed regarding the mechanisms of these factors data were collected from surveys administered to 314 chinese energy firms and a structural equation model sem was employed to test the hypotheses ten of fifteen hypotheses were retained based on the reliability tests validity tests and sem the results show that the four proposed factors are crucial in transforming the coal resource based economy and the effects become statistically significant through three intermediate variables namely transition of energy consumption structure correction of resource wealth investment and improvement of transition environment

reversal of fortunes democratic institutions and foreign direct investment inflows to developing countries does increased democracy promote or jeopardize foreign direct investment fdi inflows to less developed countries we argue that democratic institutions have conflicting effects on fdi inflows on the one hand democratic institutions hinder fdi inflows by limiting the oligopolistic or monopolistic behaviors of multinational enterprises facilitating indigenous businesses pursuit of protection from foreign capital and constraining host governments ability to offer generous financial and fiscal incentives to foreign investors on the other hand democratic institutions promote fdi inflows because they tend to ensure more credible property rights protection reducing risks and transaction costs for foreign investors hence the net effect of democracy on fdi inflows is contingent on the relative strength of these two competing forces our argument reconciles conflicting theoretical expectations in the existing literature empirical analyses of fifty three developing countries from 1982 to 1995 substantiate our claims we find that both property rights protection and democracy related property rights protection encourage fdi inflows after controlling for their positive effect through property rights protection democratic institutions reduce fdi inflows these results are robust against alternative model specifications statistical estimators and variable measurements

phase i completed an empirical assessment of the 1990 caaa with the conclusion of phase i trading of so2 allowances the epa declared the allowance trading policy to be a success the time had come to include cap and trade programs in the arsenal of effective policy tools in terms of reducing atmospheric emissions of sulfur dioxide the program appears to be successful it is not clear however whether or not the program has minimized the cost of achieving the emission reductions the measure of the true success of a market based incentive program however has yetto be quantified has the program resulted in converging marginalabatement costs across participant plants in this study i report theshadow prices of phase i power plants from 1994 to 1998 anddetermine that there are more costs to be saved within theambitious public policy experiment

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

an institutional approach to cross national distance cross national distance is a key concept in the field of management previous research has conceptualized and measured cross national differences mostly in terms of dyadic cultural distance and has used the euclidean approach to measuring it in contrast our goal is to disaggregate the construct of distance by proposing a set of multidimensional measures including economic financial political administrative cultural demographic knowledge and global connectedness as well as geographic distance we ground our analysis and choice of empirical dimensions on institutional theories of national business governance and innovation systems in order to overcome the methodological limitations of the euclidean approach we calculate dyadic distances using the mahalanobis method which is scale invariant and takes into consideration the variance covariance matrix we empirically analyze four different foreign expansion choices of us companies to illustrate the importance of disaggregating the distance construct and the usefulness of our distance calculations which we make freely available to managers and scholars

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

egalitarianism and international investment abstract this study identifies how country differences on a key cultural dimension egalitarianism influence international investment flows a society s cultural orientation toward egalitarianism is manifested by intolerance for abuses of market and political power and a desire for protecting less powerful actors we show egalitarianism to be based on exogenous factors including social fractionalization dominant religion circa 1900 and war experience from the 19th century we find a robust influence of egalitarianism distance on cross national flows of bond and equity issuances syndicated loans and mergers and acquisitions an informal cultural institution largely determined a century or more ago egalitarianism exercises its effect on international investment via an associated set of consistent contemporary policy choices but even after controlling for these associated policy choices egalitarianism continues to exercise a direct effect on cross border investment flows likely through its direct influence on managers daily business conduct

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

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

efficiency analysis of chinese industry a directional distance function approach two efficiency measures of chinese industry were estimated at the provincial level from 1994 to 2002 using a directional output distance function one is a traditional efficiency measure that considers only desirable output while the other considers both desirable and undesirable outputs simultaneously a comparison of the two measures revealed that efficiency levels are biased only if desirable output is considered five coastal provinces municipalities that have attracted a large amount of foreign direct investment are found to be the most efficient when only desirable output is considered and also when both desirable and undesirable outputs are considered however omitting undesirable output tends to lead to an overestimate of industrial efficiency levels in shandong sichuan and hebei provinces we also found that a province s industrial structure has significant effects on its efficiency levels

estimates of energy subsidies in china and impact of energy subsidy reform abstract for a transitional economy such as china some energy subsidies are reasonable and sometimes even necessary for achieving social goals however with rising energy prices and environmental concerns we see conflicts emerging between energy subsidies energy demand supply fundamentals and climate change considerations energy subsidies have important implications for sustainable development through their effects on energy use efficiency and the choice of fuel source this paper applies the price gap approach to estimate china s energy subsidies results indicate that china s energy subsidies amounted to cny 356 73 billion in 2007 equivalent to 1 43 of gdp subsidies for oil products consumption are the largest followed by subsidies for the electricity and coal sectors furthermore a cge model is used to analyze the economic impacts of energy subsidy reforms our findings show that removing energy subsidies will result in a significant fall in energy demand and emissions but will have negative impacts on macroeconomic variables we conclude that offsetting policies could be adopted such that certain shares of these subsidies are reallocated to support other sustainable development measures which could lead to reducing energy intensity and favoring the environment

currency unions and trade the effect is large the impact of a common currency on trade can be grossly mismeasured if countries that belong to currency unions are systematically different from those that do not and if the relationship between trade and its observable determinants is complex i argue that such complications are plausible and likely to distort the empirical results of a recent economic policy paper by andrew rose issue 30 2000 pp 7 45 using techniques designed to be robust in this situation i find that the effects of common currency on international trade are considerably less dramatic and much less precisely estimated copyright cepr ces msh 2001

data envelopment analysis for environmental assessment comparison between public and private ownership in petroleum industry abstract environmental assessment recently becomes a major policy issue in the world this study discusses how to apply data envelopment analysis dea for environmental assessment an important feature of the dea environmental assessment is that it needs to classify outputs into desirable good and undesirable bad outputs because private and public entities often produce not only desirable outputs but also undesirable outputs as a result of their production activities this study proposes the three types of unification for dea environmental assessment by using non radial dea models the first unification considers both an increase and a decrease in the input vector along with a decrease in the direction vector of undesirable outputs this type of unification measures unified efficiency the second unification considers a decrease in an input vector along with a decrease in the vector of undesirable outputs this type of unification is referred to as natural disposability and measures unified efficiency under natural disposability the third unification considers an increase in an input vector but a decrease in the vector of undesirable outputs this type of unification is referred to as managerial disposability and measures unified efficiency under managerial disposability all the unifications increase the vector of desirable outputs to document their practical implications this study has applied the proposed approach to compare the performance of national oil firms with that of international oil firms this study identifies two important findings on the petroleum industry one of the two findings is that national oil companies under public ownership outperform international oil companies under private ownership in terms of unified operational and environmental efficiency and unified efficiency under natural disposability however the performance of international oil companies exhibits an increasing trend in unified efficiency the other finding is that national oil companies need to satisfy the environmental standard of its own country while international oil companies need to satisfy the international standard that is more restricted than the national standards as a consequence international oil companies outperform national oil companies in terms of unified efficiency under managerial disposability

indian bank efficiency and productivity changes with undesirable outputs a disaggregated approach the objective of this study is to examine technical efficiency and productivity growth in the indian banking sector over the period from 2004 to 2011 we apply an innovative methodological approach introduced by chen et al 2011 and barros et al 2012 who use a weighted russell directional distance model to measure technical inefficiency we further modify and extend that model to measure tfp change with npls we find that the inefficiency levels are significantly different among the three ownership structure of banks in india foreign banks have strong market position in india and they pull the production frontier in a more efficient direction spbs and domestic private banks show considerably higher inefficiency we conclude that the restructuring policy applied in the late 1990s and early 2000s by the indian government has not had a long lasting effect

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

the effect of national culture on the choice of entry mode characteristics of national cultures have frequently been claimed to influence the selection of entry modes this article investigates this claim by developing a theoretical argument for why culture should influence the choice of entry two hypotheses are derived which relate culture to entry mode choice one focusing on the cultural distance between countries the other on attitudes towards uncertainty avoidance using a multinomial logit model and controlling for other effects the hypotheses are tested by analysing data on 228 entries into the united states market by acquisition wholly owned greenfield and joint venture empirical support for the effect of national culture on entry choice is found

transactions cost economics and the multinational enterprise an assessment abstract this paper applies transactions cost principles to the multinational enterprise in order to ascertain its distinctive properties as a mode of economic organization the analysis helps identify just when and where contractual alternatives to the multinational firm are likely to be viable this turns out to depend upon the nature of the technology the regime of appropriability within which the firm operates and the characteristics of the markets in question transactions cost analysis is also extended to the multinational enterprise host country relationship implications for management and public policy are derived

slack adjusted dea for time series analysis performance measurement of japanese electric power generation industry in 1984 1993 abstract using a new slack adjusted data envelopment analysis sa dea model which explicitly incorporates an influence of slacks into its efficiency measurement this study discusses a use of various efficiencies and index measures for dea dynamic analysis an analytical formulation to determine the type of return to scale rts is proposed for the new dea model this paper mathematically discusses when multiple solutions occur on rts and how to deal with such a difficulty as an important case study this paper applies the proposed dea approach to examine the performance of japanese electric power generation companies from 1984 to 1993 two policy implications are suggested for guiding the japanese electric power industry

efficiency evaluation of chinese regional industrial systems with undesirable factors using a two stage slacks based measure approach abstract the process of a regional industrial system in china can be separated into two internal stages production stage and pollutant abatement stage this paper aims to examine the efficiency of chinese regional industrial systems by taking the operational performance of its two internal stages into consideration unlike traditional data envelopment analysis models that treat decision making units as black box when measuring their efficiencies with undesirable factors this paper proposes a two stage model based on slacks based measure to evaluate the efficiency of chinese regional industrial systems by decomposing the efficiency into production efficiency and abatement efficiency the proposed model can estimate the efficiencies of the whole regional industrial system its production stage and abatement stage simultaneously the model provides a way of improving performance of a regional industrial system through identifying its inefficient internal stages this can help to find out the main sources of the inefficiency that arise from the internal stages within the system which cannot be done by using conventional environmental data envelopment analysis models findings resulting from the model application show that there are great disparities in regional industrial systems efficiencies and the inefficiency of chinese industrial system is largely driven by the abatement stage

unbundling institutional determinants of multinational investments abstractprevious studies often examined how a broad based institution affects foreign direct investment fdi flows across countries however analysis of differential impacts of two or more constituent institutions within a broad based institution appears to be more useful for policy decision making there is a paucity of studies on how constituent institutions within a broad measure of institution affect fdi across countries our article constitutes the first attempt in bridging this gap in this article we examine the relative effects of property rights institution pi and contracting institution ci on investment flows our results show that pi is much more important than ci in determining the cross border flows of fdi and affiliate sales moreover pi is found to be more important for fdi than for affiliate sales indicating that final goods are less of a concern for being expropriated by governments and powerful elites than capital goods through unbundling a broad based institution and examining

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

trade globalization since 1795 waves of integration in the world system the term globalization as used by social scientists and in popular discourse has many meanings we contend that it is important to distinguish between globalization as a contemporary political ideology and what we call structural globalization the increasing worldwide density of large scale interaction networks relative to the density of smaller networks we study one type of economic globalization over the past two centuries the trajectory of international trade as a proportion of global production is trade globalization a recent phenomenon a long term upward trend or a cyclical process using an improved measure of trade globalization we find that there have been three waves since 1795 we discuss the possible causes of these pulsations of global integration and their implications for the early decades of the twenty first century

eco efficiency analysis of power plants an extension of data envelopment analysis abstract in public discussion on environmental policy the notion of eco efficiency is often used the joint production of goods and undesirable outputs such as pollutants which may not be freely disposable without costs causes difficulties to measure the overall performance of the firm because of the absence of market prices for the undesirable outputs we are not able to estimate the environmental costs some of the measurement and evaluation difficulties can be overcome by employing data envelopment analysis dea as the efficiency measurement vehicle we propose the use of two different approaches in the first approach we start by decomposing the problem into two parts 1 the problem of measuring technical efficiency as the relation of the desirable outputs to the inputs and 2 the problem of measuring so called ecological efficiency as the relation of the desirable outputs to the undesirable outputs separately those two efficiency indicators are then combined in the second approach we treat pollutants as the inputs in the sense that we wish to increase desirable outputs and decrease pollutants and inputs the approaches are applied to the problem of measuring the efficiency of 24 power plants in a european country

will regional economic integration influence carbon dioxide marginal abatement costs evidence from chinese panel data with frequent trade and technology diffusion the barriers between regions are gradually weakening and regions have become more integrated over recent years regional economic integration not only stimulates labour mobility but also achieve scale economy both of which may also influence carbon dioxide co2 marginal abatement costs through affecting energy consumption co2 emissions productivity growth and technical progress nevertheless to the best of our knowledge none of the studies has currently concerned the influence of regional economic integration on co2 marginal abatement costs to fill this research gap this study first theoretically clarifies the influence mechanism of regional economic integration on co2 marginal abatement cost and then empirically attempts to investigate their relationship in the context of china with panel data models to serve this purpose the provincial co2 marginal abatement cost and regional economic integration are estimated by parametric directional distance function and price based approach respectively the results show that china s regional economic integration level indeed gradually improved over 2002 2011 except in 2003 04 and 2006 09 due to the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome sars and the sub prime loan crisis moreover evolution of regional economic integration indeed contributes to the increase of co2 marginal abatement cost at 5 significance level using robust tests it can be found that the results are also reliable and robust to sub samples