Regional environmental efficiency and economic growth: NUTS2 evidence from Germany, France and the UK

This paper by applying nonparametric techniques measures spatial environmental heterogeneities of 98 regions from Germany, France and the UK. Specifically environmental performance indexes are constructed for the 98 regions (NUTS 2 level) identifying their ability to produce higher growth rates and reduce pollution (in the form of municipal waste) generated from regional economic activity. By applying conditional stochastic kernels and local constant estimators it investigates the regional economic activity – environmental quality relationship. The results indicate several spatial environmental heterogeneities among the examined regions. It appears that regions with higher GDP per capita levels tend to have higher environmental performance.Regional environmental efficiency; directional distance function; conditional stochastic kernel; nonparametric regression

Medición de los rendimientos a escala y daños a escala en la evaluación natural y managerial del sector agrícola de América Latina y el Caribe, utilizando DEA

Este trabajo analiza la eficiencia unificada bajo tres enfoques natural disposability, managerial disposability, y bajo los dos anteriores juntos natural y managerial disposability. Además analiza los tipos de Rendimientos a Escala (RTS) y los Daños a Escala (DTS), en el sector agrícola de América Latina y El Caribe (ALC) durante el año 2012. Las diferentes medidas se estiman utilizando la técnica matemática no paramétrica Análisis de Envolvente de Datos (DEA), para la evaluación medioambiental, que permite descomponer el desempeño agrícola en medidas de eficiencia. Para ello, se utilizan las ocho variables convencionales de la agricultura: la alimentación animal, consumo de fertilizantes, reserva de capital-cultivo, reserva de capital-ganado, población económicamente activa, la tierra agrícola, valor de la producción agrícola y emisiones agrícolas. Los resultados obtenidos indican una mayor eficiencia bajo natural disposability en los países evaluados. Bajo este enfoque, la mayoría de los países presentan RTS constantes y RTS decrecientes, mientras bajo managerial disposability tienden a DTS constantes y DTS crecientesMinisterio de Economia y Competitividad TIN2013-46801-C4-1-rMinisterio de Economia y Competitividad P11-TIC-8052Junta de Andalucía P11-TIC-7124Junta de Andalucía SEJ-13

A Productivity analysis of Eastern European banking taking into account risk decomposition and environmental variables

This paper develops a new Luenberger productivity which is applied to a technology where the desirable and undesirable outputs are jointly produced and are possibly negative. The components of this Luenberger productivity index - the efficiency change and the components of the technological shift - are then decomposed into factors determined by the technology, adjusted for ‘risk and environment’, ‘risk management’ and ‘environmental effects’. The method is applied to Central and Eastern European banks operating during 1998–2003 utilising three alternative input/output methodologies (intermediation, production and profit/revenue). Additionally, the comparative analysis of the sensitivity of the productivity indices in the choice of the methodologies is undertaken using statistical and kernel density tests. It is found that the main driver of productivity change in Central and Eastern European banks is technological improvement, which, in the beginning of the analysed period, hinged on the banks’ ability to capitalise on advanced technology and successfully take into account risk and environmental factors. Whereas, in the later sampled periods, we show that one of the most important factors of technological improvement/decline is risk management. Finally, the tests employed confirm previous findings, such as Pasiouras (2008) in this journal, that different input/output methodologies produce statistically different productivity results. Indeed, we also find that external factors, such as a risk in the economy and banking production, and a ‘corruption perception’ affect the productivity of banks.Luenberger productivity index; DEA; banking; undesirable outputs; negative data.

Greenhouse Gas Emission Efficiencies of World Countries

Greenhouse gas emissions have increased rapidly since the industrial revolution. This has led to an unnatural increase in the global surface temperature, and to other changes in our environment. Acknowledging this observation, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change started an international environmental treaty. This treaty was extended by Kyoto protocol, which was adopted on 11 December 1997. Using the stochastic frontier analysis, we analyze the efficiencies of countries in terms of achieving the lowest greenhouse gas emission levels per GDP output in the years between 1990–2015. We find that the average greenhouse gas emission efficiencies of world countries for the time periods 1990–1997, 1998–2007, 2008–2012, and 2013–2015 are 82.40%, 90.37%, 89.54%, and 84.81%, respectively. Moreover, compared to the 1990–1997 period, 92.50%, 79.51%, and 59.84% of the countries improved their greenhouse gas emission efficiencies in the 1998–2007, 2008–2012, and 2013–2015 periods, respectively. Hence, the Kyoto protocol helped in increasing greenhouse emission efficiency. However, this efficiency-boosting effect faded away over time

Efficiency in Brazilian Refineries Under Different DEA Technologies

This paper aims to assess the environmental efficiency of refineries in the public sector with emphasis on generated effluents and water consumption in the production process. In order to conduct this research, the addressed method was quantitative with a qualitative approach to the environmental aspects of controllable and uncontrollable variables implemented in two classical models of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), considering only desirable outputs and two DEA models which include undesirable outputs. The sample consists of ten refineries considering the following as input variables: idleness percentage of the operating plant, the amount of water consumed; and the following as outputs: refinery production volume and generated effluents, desirable and undesirable, respectively, besides the uncontrollable variable, the refinery age. With the comparison result between the models, we observed the clear importance of the environmental variable for a more realistic analysis of the production process

Factors Affecting Efficiency Of Railways In Terms Of Safety At Railway Level Crossings

Road traffic accidents are in the top ten of all deaths, with around 1.4 million fatalities and 50 million injuries per year worldwide. Regarding railways, in the EU there were 1666 serious accidents registered in 2018 and 442 of them involved Level Crossings (LCs). The number of accidents on level crossings in the EU in 2018 was approximately 27% of the total number of accidents on railways, but these accidents can be predictable and preventable. The current study investigated the efficiency of railways in terms of accident risk at LCs in 24 countries of the EU. The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method has been applied to evaluate the efficiency of selected railways in terms of safety at LCs. After extensive study of the subject, the comprehensive list of influencing factors has been identified and seven of them have been selected for further analysis. To investigate the relationship between selected factors and efficiency score of railways in terms of accident risk at LCs, the IBM SPSS software package has been deployed. The results show that GDP per capita and density of population in the selected countries have a strong influence on the efficiency of railways in terms of safety at LCs. The expected outcome of this research may contribute to a better understanding of the factors that influence the efficiency score of railways in term of accident risk at LCs and may help to develop preventative measures

Benchmarking Environmental Efficiency of Ports Using Data Mining and RDEA: The Case of a U.S. Container Ports

This study provides step-wise benchmarking practices of each port to enhance the environmental performance using a joint application of the data-mining technique referred to as Kohonen’s self-organizing map (KSOM) and recursive data envelopment analysis (RDEA) to address the limitation of the conventional data envelopment analysis. A sample of 20 container ports in the U.S.A. were selected, and data on input variables (number of quay crane, acres, berth and depth) and output variables (number of calls, throughput and deadweight tonnage, and CO2 emissions) are used for data analysis. Among the selected samples, eight container ports are found to be environmentally inefficient. However, there appears to be a high potential to become environmentally efficient ports. In conclusion, it can be inferred that the step-wise benchmarking process using two combined methodologies substantiates that a more applicable benchmarking target set of decision-making units is be projected, which consider the similarity of the physical and operational characteristics of homogenous ports for improving environmental efficiency

A new slacks-based measure of Malmquist-Luenberger index in the presence of undesirable outputs

In the majority of production processes, noticeable amounts of bad byproducts or bad outputs are produced. The negative effects of the bad outputs on efficiency cannot be handled by the standard Malmquist index to measure productivity change over time. Toward this end, the Malmquist-Luenberger index (MLI) has been introduced, when undesirable outputs are present. In this paper, we introduce a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model as well as an algorithm, which can successfully eliminate a common infeasibility problem encountered in MLI mixed period problems. This model incorporates the best endogenous direction amongst all other possible directions to increase desirable output and decrease the undesirable outputs at the same time. A simple example used to illustrate the new algorithm and a real application of steam power plants is used to show the applicability of the proposed model

Environmental Efficiency Assessment of U.S. Transport Sector: A Slack-based Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

Sustainable transportation in the U.S. is essential for long-term economic growth and mobility, and environmental preservation. Using a non-radial slack-based measurement data envelopment analysis (SBM-DEA) model and state-level data, this study assesses the environmental efficiency of the transportation sector in the U.S. from years 2004 to 2012. In addition to environmental efficiency, carbon efficiency and potential carbon reduction were estimated for the 50 U.S. states. The findings of this study reveal that U.S. transportation sector was environmentally inefficient; U.S. states had an average transportation environmental efficiency score below 0.64. Therefore the states could substantially reduce carbon emissions to improve the environmental efficiency of their transportation sectors

Eco-efficiency measurement and material balance principle:an application in power plants Malmquist Luenberger Index

Incorporating Material Balance Principle (MBP) in industrial and agricultural performance measurement systems with pollutant factors has been on the rise in recent years. Many conventional methods of performance measurement have proven incompatible with the material flow conditions. This study will address the issue of eco-efficiency measurement adjusted for pollution, taking into account materials flow conditions and the MBP requirements, in order to provide ‘real’ measures of performance that can serve as guides when making policies. We develop a new approach by integrating slacks-based measure to enhance the Malmquist Luenberger Index by a material balance condition that reflects the conservation of matter. This model is compared with a similar model, which incorporates MBP using the trade-off approach to measure productivity and eco-efficiency trends of power plants. Results reveal similar findings for both models substantiating robustness and applicability of the proposed model in this paper