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

experimenting with multi attribute utility survey methods in a multi dimensional valuation problem abstract the use of willingness to pay wtp survey techniques based on multi attribute utility mau approaches has been recommended by some authors as a way to deal simultaneously with two difficulties that increasingly plague environmental valuation the first of these is that as valuation exercises come to involve less familiar and more subtle environmental effects such as ecosystem management lay respondents are less likely to have any idea in advance of the value they would attach to a described result the second is that valuation questions may increasingly be about multi dimensional effects e g changes in ecosystem function as opposed for example to changes in visibility from a given point mau has been asserted to allow the asking of simpler questions even in the context of difficult subjects and it is as the name suggests inherently multi dimensional this paper asks whether mau techniques can be shown to make a difference in the context of questions about preferences over and valuation of differences between alternative descriptions of a forest ecosystem making a difference is defined in terms of internal consistency of answers to preference and wtp questions involving three 5 attribute forest descriptions the method involves first asking mau structured questions attribute by attribute the responses to these questions allow researchers to infer each respondent s preferences and wtp second the same respondents are asked directly about their preferences and wtps the answer to the making a difference question based largely on comparing the inferred and stated results is not straightforward overall the inferred results are good predictors of what is stated but the agreement is by no means perfect and the individual differences are not explainable by the socio economic characteristics of the individuals since the technique involves creating a long somewhat tedious and even apparently confusing series of tasks though each task may itself be simple it is by no means clear that the prescription use mau techniques holds the same level of practical as of theoretical promise

productivity growth and biased technological change in hydroelectric dams abstract this paper analyses productivity growth and the nature of technical change in a sample of portuguese hydroelectric generating plants over the period 2001 to 2008 in a first step we employ the luenberger productivity indicator to estimate and decompose productivity change a malmquist productivity index is also used for a comparative purpose the results paint a picture of mixed productivity performance in the portuguese energy sector the first decomposition underlines that in average the productivity variation is explained by the technological change then in a second step we analyse the nature of this technical change by using the recent concept of parallel neutrality briec et al 2006 we observe a global shift in the best practice frontier as well as in the evidence of input bias in technical change

total factor productivity and the measurement of technological change tfp is interpreted in the literature in different mutually contradictory ways changes in tfp are shown to measure not technological change only the super normal returns to investing in such change returns that exceed the full opportunity cost of the activity thus in the limit technological change can proceed with unchanged tfp measuring the effects of technological change instead requires counterfactual estimates reasons why changes in tfp are imperfect measures of super normal returns are also studied reasons connected with the timing of output responses the treatment of r d in the national accounts the omission of resource inputs and two types of aggregation la productivite totale des facteurs et la mesure du changement technologique la productivite totale des facteurs ptf est interpretee dans la litterature de manieres differentes et mutuellement contradictoires on montre que les changements dans la ptf ne mesurent pas le changement technologique mais seulement les rendements supra normaux sur les investissements dans de tels changements des rendements qui depassent le plein cout d opportunite de cette activite donc a la limite le changement technologique peut proceder sans que la ptf change mesurer les effets du changement technique reclame des evaluations d hypotheses de rechange les raisons pour lesquelles les changements dans la ptf sont des mesures imparfaites des rendements supra normaux sont aussi etudiees raisons connectees avec la reponse des niveaux de production le traitement de la r d dans les comptes nationaux l omission des intrants de ressources et deux types d agregation

an optimization methodology for identifying robust process integration investments under uncertainty uncertainties in future energy prices and policies strongly affect decisions on investments in process integration measures in industry in this paper we present a five step methodology for the identification of robust investment alternatives incorporating explicitly such uncertainties in the optimization model methods for optimization under uncertainty or stochastic programming are thus combined with a deep understanding of process integration and process technology in order to achieve a framework for decision making concerning the investment planning of process integration measures under uncertainty the proposed methodology enables the optimization of investments in energy efficiency with respect to their net present value or an environmental objective in particular as a result of the optimization approach complex investment alternatives allowing for combinations of energy efficiency measures can be analyzed uncertainties as well as time dependent parameters such as energy prices and policies are modelled using a scenario based approach enabling the identification of robust investment solutions the methodology is primarily an aid for decision makers in industry but it will also provide insight for policy makers into how uncertainties regarding future price levels and policy instruments affect the decisions on investments in energy efficiency measures

exploring the green total factor productivity of china s metallurgical industry under carbon tax a perspective on factor substitution abstract the characteristics of high emissions and high energy consumption in metallurgical industry have brought great challenges to the green and low carbon transition in china as a low carbon economic instrument carbon tax is generally considered to be an effective way to reduce co2 emissions through raising energy cost but whether it will promote the green total factor productivity gtfp of china s metallurgical industry is still unanswered under this background this paper uses provincial panel data over years 2000 2015 to investigate the impact of carbon taxation on gtfp of metallurgical industry from the perspective of inter fuel and inter factor substitution the lock in mechanism is also incorporated in the three stage estimation model to better reflect the asymmetric price response of factors and fuels the results reveal that the slow marketization process of energy price and the rigid demand for energy in china s metallurgical industry hinder the substitution effect of energy the implementation of carbon tax has limited effect on energy saving and co2 reduction in the metallurgical industry of china and levying a carbon tax has a negative effect on gtfp during the research period therefore the government should not achieve co2 reduction targets at the expense of green economic growth gtfp is suggested to be considered in future assessment criteria in the process of transforming to low carbon economy

foreign direct investment spillovers and technical efficiency in the indonesian pharmaceutical sector firm level evidence the spillovers of foreign direct investment fdi on domestic firms performances have been highly debated for many years this article contributes to this debate by analysing spillovers effects on technical efficiency of indonesian pharmaceutical sector using a unique unbalanced panel of highly disaggregated at five digit international standard industrial classification isic 210 firms over the period 1990 1995 1001 observations the stochastic production frontier spf and the data envelopment analysis dea based on malmquist productivity indices mpi have been used to test the spillovers effects of fdi on technical efficiency the empirical results from the spf show that foreign firms are more efficient than domestic competitors and the presence of the former increases the inefficiency of the latter similarly the results from the mpi demonstrate that fdi has a negative and significant impact on technical efficiency changes in domestic competitors but generate positive spillovers to domestic s

multi period efficiency and malmquist productivity index in two stage production systems abstract conventional two stage data envelopment analysis dea models measure the overall performance of a production system composed of two stages processes in a specified period of time where variations in different periods are ignored this paper takes the operations of individual periods into account to develop a multi period two stage dea model which is able to measure the overall and period efficiencies at the same time with the former expressed as a weighted average of the latter since the efficiency of a two stage system in a period is the product of the two process efficiencies the overall efficiency of a decision making unit dmu in the specified period of time can be decomposed into the process efficiency of each period based on this decomposition the sources of inefficiency in a dmu can be identified the efficiencies measured from the model can also be used to calculate a common weight global malmquist productivity index mpi between two periods in that the overall mpi is the product of the two process mpis the non life insurance industry in taiwan is used to verify the proposed model and to explain why some companies performed unsatisfactorily in the specified period of time

sectoral change catching up and slowing down oecd post war economic growth revisited abstract regression analysis of gdp growth since 1950 on pooled oecd cross sections indicates uniform technological catch up in all sectors but lower marginal labour productivity in agriculture the decline in opportunities to reallocate labour explains some of the post 1973 productivity slowdown

productivity and efficiency change and shareholder value evidence from the spanish banking sector productivity change and shareholder value have been analysed in the banking sector in the last few years although it should be noted that these two important aspects have been studied separately in this regard the main contribution of our study is to link these two lines of research by verifying whether those banks characterized by higher levels of efficiency and productivity change have a higher shareholder value to measure changes in efficiency and productivity we use the malmquist nonparametric technique which is calculated from data envelopment analysis dea linear programming approach the malmquist total factor productivity index enables separation of the catching up effect i e changes over time in technical efficiency from technological change i e the shift of best practice frontier over time due to technological progress our results for a sample of listed spanish banks in the period 2000 to 2004 confirm that those banks with higher efficiency and productivity changes have a higher

on measuring the efficiency of monetary policy abstract cecchetti et al 2006 develop a method for allocating macroeconomic performance changes among the structure of the economy variability of supply shocks and monetary policy we propose a dual approach of their method by borrowing well known tools from the production theory

a critical review of multi criteria decision making methods with special reference to forest management and planning abstract this paper provides a review of research contributions on forest management and planning using multi criteria decision making mcdm based on an exhaustive literature survey the review primarily focuses on the application aspects highlighting theoretical underpinnings and controversies it also examines the nature of the problems addressed and incorporation of risk into forest management and planning decision making the mcdm techniques covered in this review belong to several schools of thought for each technique a variety of empirical applications including recent studies has been reviewed more than 60 individual studies were reviewed and classified by the method used country of origin number and type of criteria and options evaluated the review serves as a guide to those interested in how to use a particular mcdm approach based on the review some recent trends and future research directions are also highlighted

the impact of environmental expenditures on performance in the u s chemical industry abstract this study analyzes chemical industry companies with environmental expenditures to determine which ones have better financial performance in addition this study uses data envelopment analysis to evaluate the efficiency of firms with and without environmental expenditures this study also utilizes the malmquist productivity index mpi to analyze firms productivity change and a bootstrap method to test whether the indexes are statistically significant finally this study divides chemical industry companies into three main categories based on their products the results of this study provide significant evidence of a relationship between environmental expenditures and financial performance the findings suggest that firms with environmental expenditures have better efficiency and productivity hence the study encourages companies in the industry to put more effort into protecting the environment that can be through practicing cleaner production to create higher benefits

the role of environmental factors in growth accounting this paper explores a relatively new methodology the directional distance function method to analyse productivity growth the method allows us to explicitly evaluate the role that undesirable outputs of the economy such as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have on the frontier production process which we specify as a piecewise linear and convex boundary function we decompose productivity growth into efficiency change catching up and technology change innovation we test the statistical significance of the estimates using recently developed bootstrap methods we also explore implications for growth of total factor productivity in the oecd and asian economies copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

estimating most productive scale size using data envelopment analysis abstract the relation between the most productive scale size mpss for paparticular input and output mixes and returns to scale for multiple inputs multiple outputs situations is explicitly developed this relation is then employed to extend the applications of data envelopment analysis dea introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes ccr to the estimation of most productive scale sizes for convex production possibility sets it is then shown that in addition to productive inefficiencies at the actual scale size the ccr efficiency measure also reflects any inefficiencies due to divergence from the most productive scale size two illustrations of the practical applications of these results to the estimation of most productive scale sizes and returns to scale for hospitals and stem electric generation plants are also provided emphasize the advantage of this method in examining specific segments of the efficient production surface

eco efficiency of the western taiwan straits economic zone an evaluation based on a novel eco efficiency model and empirical analysis of influencing factors abstract obtaining the most economic benefits while using the least resources and causing the least environmental damage is an urgent and key problem in achieving sustainable development the concept of eco efficiency provides a comprehensive perspective for observing and solving this problem this paper proposes an extended data envelopment analysis model named the win us sbm as a comprehensive eco efficiency evaluation method that can accommodate undesirable outputs all the identification problems of decision making units dmus possible slacks of variables and the problems of an insufficient number of available dmus and intertemporal comparability china s western taiwan straits economic zone wts economic zone is an important regional economic growth center by applying win us sbm and arcgis software we investigated data on the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of eco efficiency in the wts economic zone for the years 2009 2016 later the global malmquist luenberger index was used to decompose the sources of growth in eco efficiency finally the main driving factors of eco efficiency were explored through a tobit regression analysis the empirical results show that 1 the overall eco efficiency of the wts economic zone had greatly improved increasing by 11 46 annually and the cumulative growth rate of eco efficiency was 110 84 from 2009 to 2016 2 the eastern area had the highest average eco efficiency followed by the western area and the middle area in that order also the growth rate of the middle area ranked first 16 68 whereas the eastern area had the slowest growth in eco efficiency 7 22 3 on the whole the growth of eco efficiency was driven mainly by technological progress and was restricted by the decrease in management level which implies that policy makers should focus on improving management and technical levels 4 high levels of economic development population density market openness and industrial structure had positive effects on the eco efficiency of the wts economic zone whereas energy intensity and expenditure on science and technology had negative impacts

radial and non radial decompositions of profit change with an application to indian banking abstract grifell tatje and lovell grifell tatje e lovell c a k 1999 profits and productivity management science 45 1177 1193 made significant contributions to the literature on the extended radial dea framework by decomposing profit change into six mutually exclusive components their approach however poses two basic problems first the radial estimates on these components might give conflicting signals about the direction of profit change after the full radial efficiencies are achieved when slacks are present second evaluations of these components using base period prices as weights can be potentially misleading to address these concerns we first introduce non radial dea models and then provide a few strong theoretical arguments in favor of using as weights either current period prices or an average price covering both periods to value the contributions of each of these components the indian banking sector is taken as a case study to illustrate the radial and non radial decompositions of profit change so as to empirically examine the role of competition on profit change and its drivers our broad empirical results are as follows first radial and non radial models yield diametrically opposite results on the contributions of various components second the increasing efficiency change trends in all ownership groups after 2002 indicate that the government reform process instituted on the banking industry has had a favorable effect on the performance of the indian banking sector third despite the fact that nationalized banks are the oldest banks their output and resource allocation behaviors do not reflect their learning experience

reconsidering heterogeneity and aggregation issues in environmental valuation a multi attribute approach the economic valuation of complex environmental goods composed of multiple attributes is an expanding field of research in ecological and environmental economics however several issues are still subjects of debate this paper focuses on three of them the linearity of the valuation function in the attributes aggregation criteria for obtaining social values and the heterogeneity of individuals utility functions a methodological approach based on multi attribute utility theory which enables us to contrast the impact of these concerns on the valuation of environmental goods is proposed we employ the methodology to value a protected natural area and from the results obtained we can conclude that the non linearity and the heterogeneity of the individual utility function are relevant aspects of environmental valuation that need to be taken into account when valuing environmental goods

decomposition of the fisher ideal index of productivity a non parametric dual analysis of us airlines data in this paper we offer a non parametric method of decomposing the fisher ideal index of productivity into individual factors measuring i technical efficiency change ii allocative efficiency change iii shift in the cost function iv scale economies due to output change and v an adjustment factor reflecting change in the output attributes cross section data from the us airline industry for the years i 983 and i 984 are utilised in an empirical application illustrating this method the rate of multifactor productivity growth mfpg over time in the single output multiple input case can be measured by the difference in the rates of growth in the quantity of output and the divisia index of input quantity when no technical inefficiency exists this rate of mfpg can be decomposed into two additive components i the rate of technical change measuring the rate of change in the volume of output holding the input bundle unchanged and ii a returns to scale effect showing change in productivity with changes in the input quantities without technical change when technical efficiency varies over time a part of the measured rate of mfpg would be due to efficiency

assessing productivity changes in uk hospitals reflecting technology and input prices in this study malmquist productivity indexes are used to evaluate the performance of acute hospitals in the uk over the period after the introduction of the internal market in the national health service in 1991 the indexes are computed using nonparametric programming known as data envelopment analysis and they are decomposed into multiple component measures to give insights into the trends in hospital performance overall it is found that productivity regressed in the year after the reforms but progressed thereafter so that overall there was a net progress both as far as the inputs and costs are concerned productivity progress is mainly due to overall efficiency progress which in turn is mostly attributed to allocative efficiency improvements technical change resulted in a small reduction in the amount of inputs used but also at higher production costs because of a worsening in the match between input mixes and relative input prices however it is suggested that the gains in productivity are not

regulatory reforms and productivity an empirical analysis of the japanese electricity industry the japanese electricity industry has experienced regulatory reforms since the mid 1990s this article measures productivity in japan s steam power generation sector and examines the effect of reforms on the productivity of this industry over the period 1978 2003 we estimate the luenberger productivity indicator which is a generalization of the commonly used malmquist productivity index using a data envelopment analysis approach factors associated with productivity change are investigated through dynamic generalized method of moments gmm estimation of panel data our empirical analysis shows that the regulatory reforms have contributed to productivity growth in the steam power generation sector in japan

has monetary policy become more efficient a cross country analysis over the past twenty years macroeconomic performance has improved in industrialized and developing countries alike in a broad cross section of countries inflation volatility has fallen markedly while output variability has either fallen or risen only slightly this increased stability can be attributed to either 1 more efficient policymaking by the monetary authority 2 a reduction in the variability of the aggregate supply shocks or 3 changes in the structure of the economy in this paper we develop a method for measuring changes in performance and allocate the source of performance changes to these two factors our technique involves estimating movements toward an inflation and output variability efficiency frontier and shifts in the frontier itself we study the change from the 1980s to the 1990s in the macroeconomic performance of 24 countries and find that for most of the analyzed countries more efficient policy has been the driving force behind improved macroeconomic performance

a constructive approach to air quality valuation in korea abstract this paper uses a new constructive contingent valuation approach based on the value structuring capabilities of multi attribute utility theory maut to help respondents construct and express environmental value judgments in monetary terms the maut approach adopts a decomposition procedure which seems to be more in harmony with the constructive nature of human values and the coping strategies of respondents dealing with complexity we provide an application of the approach in a survey of random population samples where we seek valuation of specific damages due to air pollution in seoul korea a developing country where the economic valuation of environmental impacts remains scarce a discussion of the results is also presented the overall results show that although empirical evidence is sparse there appears to be considerable scope for the use of the approach in environmental valuations

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

how people respond to contingent valuation questions a verbal protocol analysis of willingness to pay for an environmental regulation abstract this paper investigates what a respondent is thinking when answering a willingness to pay question in a contingent valuation using a think aloud technique from psychology called verbal protocol analysis the willingness to pay responses we observed seem to be constructed from a variety of considerations including an obligation to pay a fair share of the cost of the solution and signaling concern for a larger set of environmental issues the finding that respondents seem to construct their values at the time they are asked rather than reporting a more well defined value is seen as consistent with over two decades of research on the psychology of decision making potential uses of verbal protocols in contingent valuation studies are also discussed

benefits of using an optimization methodology for identifying robust process integration investments under uncertainty a pulp mill example this paper presents a case study on the optimization of process integration investments in a pulp mill considering uncertainties in future electricity and biofuel prices and co2 emissions charges the work follows the methodology described in svensson et al svensson e berntsson t stromberg a b patriksson m 2008b an optimization methodology for identifying robust process integration investments under uncertainty accepted for publication in energypolicy where a scenario based approach is proposed for the modelling of uncertainties the results show that the proposed methodology provides a way to handle the time dependence and the uncertainties of the parameters for the analyzed case a robust solution is found which turns out to be a combination of two opposing investment strategies the difference between short term and strategic views for the investment decision is analyzed and it is found that uncertainties are increasingly important to account for as a more strategic view is employed furthermore the results imply that the obvious effect of policy instruments aimed at decreasing co2 emissions is in applications like this an increased profitability for all energy efficiency investments and not as much a shift between different alternatives

modelling technical efficiency in cross sectionally dependent stochastic frontier panels summary this paper proposes a unified framework for accommodating both time and cross sectional dependence in modelling technical efficiency in stochastic frontier models by combining the exogenously driven factor based approach and an endogenous threshold efficiency regime selection mechanism this approach is able to deal with both weak and strong cross sectional dependence in a flexible manner using a dataset of 26 oecd countries over 1970 2010 we provide satisfactory estimation results for the production technology parameters and the associated efficiency ranking of individual countries we find a positive spillover effect on efficiency supporting the hypothesis that knowledge spillover is more likely to be induced by technological proximity furthermore our approach enables us to identify efficiency clubs endogenously

technical efficiency and productivity analysis in indonesian provincial economies this article estimates inefficiency and total factor productivity tfp across indonesian provinces from 1993 to 2000 indonesia is a large emerging market economy but provinces within the country due to the island structure of the country are more distinct from one another compared to other countries we use a stochastic frontier methodology to estimate inefficiency and tfp we find that tfp fell by an average rate of 7 5 across provinces due to the decrease in technical efficiency in fact the majority of output growth within indonesia is explained by the accumulation of inputs in this sense economic growth within indonesia does not appear to be sustainable without reversing these trends

the effect of incentive reforms upon productivity evidence from the vietnamese rice industry in this study we use region level panel data on rice production in vietnam to investigate total factor productivity tfp growth in the period since reunification in 1975 two significant reforms were introduced during this period one in 1981 allowing farmers to keep part of their produce and another in 1987 providing improved land tenure we measure tfp growth using two modified forms of the standard malmquist data envelopment analysis dea method which we have named the three year window tyw and the full cumulative fc methods we have developed these methods to deal with degrees of freedom limitations our empirical results indicate strong average tfp growth of between 3 3 and 3 5 per cent per annum with the fastest growth observed in the period following the first reform our results support the assertion that incentive related issues have played a large role in the decline and subsequent resurgence of vietnamese agriculture

malmquist productivity indexes and fisher ideal indexes comment fare and grosskopf i992 henceforth abbreviated as fg showed that under some conditions the productivity index defined as the geometric mean of two input based malmquist productivity indexes is equal to the quotient of the fisher input quantity index and the fisher output quantity index both fisher indices can be computed from observed prices and quantities these conditions appear to be so strong that they will almost certainly never be fulfilled in practice this is shown by a careful inspection of fg s proof however under slightly milder but more plausible conditions it can be shown that the quotient of the fisher input index and the fisher output index is a reasonable approximation of the productivity index consider a firm at two time periods t o i with different technologies which are modelled by the input correspondences lt y x x can produce y x c rn yce rm it is assumed that the sets lt y are closed and convex and that inputs are strongly disposable the vectors x yt wt pt t o i denote observed inputs observed outputs observed input prices and observed output prices respectively the productivity index is defined as

is inflation in developing countries driven by low productivity or monetary growth abstract this paper investigates whether inflation in developing countries is driven by retrogression in productivity or by monetary expansion our empirical methodology relies on growth accounting non parametric and generalized method of moment techniques results indicate that inflation is primarily driven by monetary growth

sources of productivity growth using the fare primont decomposition an empirical application to the irish beef sector several competing methodologies for tfp estimation have been developed in the past decades a popular approach in the literature is index number computation the most widely implemented tfp indices

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

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

a non parametric analysis of productivity the case of u s and japanese manufacturing a nonparametric analysis of technology technical change and productivity is presented in the context of cost minimizing behavior a number of nonparametric tests concerning the existence and nature of technical change are applied to u s and japanese manufacturing data nonparametric measures of technical change are presented copyright 1990 by american economic association

efficiency and technical progress sources of convergence in the spanish regions the paper analyses the contribution of efficiency as a mechanism of labour productivity convergence taking as the unit of analysis the spanish regions in the period 1964 1993 using the stochastic frontier approach a translogarithmic production function is estimated for the different sectors of the spanish regional economy demonstrating on this basis the existence of substantial differences in efficiency between sectors as well as between regions with regard to convergence the results obtained indicate that at aggregate level the convergence observed in labour productivity is explained by the faster growth of the capital labour ratio of the initially poorer regions and the contribution of technical change and the efficiency hence by the convergence of tfp however the information by sectors shows different results thus on the one hand the importance of the convergence in production per employee is seen in all sectors except agriculture and on the other it is observed that technical change is a

bridging the gap between partial and total factor productivity measures using directional distance functions technical dependencies as well as data constraints limit our ability to allocate inputs across sectors and hence our ability to measure sectoral productivity we adapt a directional measure of efficiency to the measurement of sector specific productivity that does not require allocating all inputs across sectors applied to the agricultural sector of a group of countries the results show important differences in livestock and crops productivity growth commonly used partial factor productivity measures for livestock and crops tend to overestimate productivity growth in most developing countries while underestimating it in european countries

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

the evolution and main determinants of productivity in brazilian electricity distribution 1998 2005 an empirical analysis abstract this paper estimates changes in the productivity of the brazilian electricity distribution sector using data envelopment analysis dea on a panel of 18 firms from 1998 to 2005 the study decomposes the productivity change of these distribution firms in terms of technical efficiency scale efficiency and technical progress this exercise aims to help the understanding of the main determinants of the evolution of productivity focusing its relationship with the restructuring process implemented in the 1990s tfp index records a yearly positive growth rate of 1 3 in the whole period under analysis for all firms technical change was the main component behind this evolution with an average growth of 2 1 per year while technical efficiency presented a yearly negative performance of 0 8 the results prove that in general terms the incentives generated in the reform process do not seem to have led the firms to behave in a more efficient manner