Is technical efficiency affected by farmers’ preference for mitigation and adaptation actions against climate change? A case study in northwest Mexico

Climate change has adverse effects on agriculture, decreasing crop quality and productivity. This makes it necessary to implement adaptation and mitigation strategies that contribute to the maintenance of technical efficiency (TE). This study analyzed the relationship of TE with farmers’ mitigation and adaptation action preferences, their risk and environmental attitudes, and their perception of climate change. Through the stochastic frontier method, TE levels were estimated for 370 farmers in Northwest Mexico. The results showed the average efficiency levels (57%) for three identified groups of farmers: High TE (15% of farmers), average TE (72%), and low TE (13%). Our results showed a relationship between two of the preferred adaptation actions against climate change estimated using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. The most efficient farmers preferred “change crops,” while less efficient farmers preferred “invest in irrigation infrastructure.” The anthropocentric environmental attitude inferred from the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale was related to the level of TE. Efficient farmers were those with an anthropocentric environmental attitude, compared to less efficient farmers, who exhibited an ecocentric attitude. The climate change issues were more perceived by moderately efficient farmers. These findings set out a roadmap for policy-makers to face climate change at the regional levelPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Environmental Efficiency, Emission Trends and Labour Productivity: Trade-Off or Joint Dynamics? Empirical Evidence Using NAMEA Panel Data

The paper provides new empirical evidence on the relationship between environmental efficiency and labour productivity using industry level data. We first provide a critical and extensive discussion around the interconnected issues of environmental efficiency and performance, firm performances and labour productivity, and environmental and non-environmental innovation dynamics. The most recent literature dealing with environmental innovation, environmental regulations and economic performances is taken as reference. We then test a newly adapted EKC hypothesis, by verifying the correlation between the two trends of environmental efficiency (productivity, namely sector emission on added value) and labour productivity (added value on employees) over a dynamic path. We exploit official NAMEA data sources for Italy over 1990-2002 for 29 sectoral branches. The period is crucial since environmental issues and then environmental policies came into the arena, and a restructuring of the economy occurred. It is thus interesting to assess the extent to which capital investments for the economy as a whole are associated with a positive or negative correlation between environmental efficiency of productive branches and labour productivity, often claimed by mainstream theory dealing with innovation in environmental economics. We believe that on the basis of the theoretical and empirical analyses focusing on innovation paths, firm performances and environmental externalities, there are good reasons to expect a positive correlation between environmental and labour productivities, or in alternative terms a negative correlation between mission intensity of production and labour productivity. The tested hypothesis is crucial within the long standing discussion over the potential trade-off or complementarity between environmental and labour productivity, strictly associated with sectoral and national technological innovation paths. The main added value of the paper is the analysis of the aforementioned hypothesis by exploiting a panel data set based on official NAMEA sectoral disaggregated accounting data, providing both cross section heterogeneity and a sufficient time span. We find that for most emissions, if not all, a negative correlation emerges between labour productivity and environmental productivity. Though this trend appears driven by the macro sectors services, manufacturing and industry, this evidence is not homogenous across emissions. In some cases U-shapes arise, mainly for services, and the assessment of Turning Points is crucial. Manufacturing and industry, all in all, seem to have a stronger weight. Overall, then, labour productivity dynamics seem to be complementary to a decreasing emission intensity of productive processes. The extent to which this evidence derives from endogenous market forces, industrial restructuring and/or from policy effects is scope for further research. The relative role of manufacturing and services in explaining this pattern is also to be analysed in future empirical analyses. In addition, the role of capital stocks and trade openness are extensions which may add value to future analyses carried out on the same NAMEA dataset.Decoupling, NAMEA Emissions, Labour Productivity, Sectoral Added Value, Kuznets Curves, Environmental Efficiency

Can institutional forces create competitive advantage? An empirical examination of environmental innovation

We examine institutional pressures as antecedents of environmental innovation. Drawing on institutional theory and a resource-based view of the firm, we argue that regulatory and normative forces influence companies' propensity to innovate in environment-related projects. Furthermore, we suggest that this relationship is contingent on the availability and specificity of the companies' resources. These relationships were tested using environmental patents and citations of 340 publicly-traded companies from polluting industries in the U.S. Results suggest that institutional pressures can be a source of competitive advantage, and regulatory forces are becoming more strongly associated with environmental innovations as the intensity of companies' R&D activities increase.environmental innovation; institutional theory; resource-based view;

Assessing Eco-Efficiency in Asian and African Countries Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis

This study aims to evaluate the economic and environmental efficiency of Asian and African economies. In the model proposed, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is considered as the desired output and Greenhouse Gases (GHG), like carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, as the undesirable output. Capital, labor, fossil fuels, and renewable energy consumption are regarded as inputs, and the GDP/CO2 ratio is the output, by using a log-linear Translog production function and using data from 2005 until 2018, including 22 Asian and 22 African countries. Results evidence cross-countries heterogeneity among production inputs, namely labor, capital, and type of energy use and its efficiency. The models complement each other and are based on different distributional assumptions and estimation methods while providing a picture of Eco-efficiency in Asian and African economies. Labor and renewable energy share increase technical Eco-efficiency, while fixed capital decreases it under time-variant models. Technical improvements in Eco-efficiency are verified through time considering the time variable into the model estimations, replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources. An inverted U-shaped Eco-efficiency function is found concerning the share of fossil fuel consumption. Important policy implications are drawn from the results regarding the empirical results.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A dynamic stochastic frontier approach with persistent and transient inefficiency and unobserved heterogeneity

This article introduces a dynamic stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) framework with unobserved heterogeneity, persistent and transient inefficiency effects, based on recent advances in the SFA literature. The newly developed dynamic frontier model is applied on a sample of French crop-livestock farms. The estimates provide useful insights for the estimation of the technical efficiency scores as well as for the analysis of the associations of contextual drivers, such as public subsidies and indebtedness, with technical efficiency.Peer reviewe

Diffusion of Emissions Abating Technology

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) has been extensively criticized on econometric and theoretical grounds. Recent econometric results and case studies show that national emissions of important pollutants are monotonic in income but changes in technology can lead over time to reductions in pollution - a lowering of the EKC - and that pollution reducing innovations and standards may be adopted with relatively short time lags in some developing countries. This study combines the recent literature on measuring environmental efficiency and technological change using production frontier methods with the use of the Kalman filter - a time series method for signal extraction - to model the state of abatement technology in a panel of countries over time. The EKC is reformulated as the best practice technology frontier - countries' position relative to the frontier reflects the degree to which they have adopted best practice. The results are used to determine whether countries are converging to best practice over time and how many years it will take each country to achieve current best practice. The model is applied to sulfur dioxide emissions from sixteen mainly developed countries.

Moving to greener pastures : multinationals and the pollution-haven hypothesis

Are multinationals flocking to pollution havens in developing countries? Using data from four developing countries (Cote d'Ivoire, Mexico, Morocco, and Venezuela), the authors examine the pattern of foreign investment. They find almost no evidence that foreign investors are concentrated in dirty sectors. They also examine the behavior of multinationals doing business in these four countries, testing whether there is any tendency for foreign firms to pollute more or less than their host country counterparts. To do this, they use consumption of energy and dirty fuels as a proxy for pollution intensity. They find that foreign plants in these four developing countries are significantly more energy-efficient and use cleaner types of energy than their domestic counterparts. The authors conclude with an analysis of US outbound investment between 1982 and 1994. They reject the hypothesis that the pattern of US foreign investment is skewed toward industries in which the cost of pollution abatement is high.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water and Industry,Pollution Management&Control,Decentralization,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water and Industry,Pollution Management&Control,Energy and Environment,Economic Theory&Research

Structural changes and sustainability. A selected review of the empirical evidence

The paper offers a review of selected topics in the empirical literature on structural change and sustainability. We focus on aspects of structural change that directly affect emissions and energy intensity: changes of the sectoral composition of economies, trade and international fragmentation of production, technological change and innovation, and demand. We identify several empirical facts. First, only a few countries have experienced a decoupling between growth and emissions, due to proportionately faster growth rather than greater energy efficiency. Second, the long-term shift from manufacturing to services has not led, in all cases, to the de-materialisation of economies and a lower environmental burden. Exploitation of energy efficiency increases depends on the ability of the service sectors to incorporate technical changes to reduce energy intensity. Third, global trade and energy and emissions intensity trends support the ‘pollution haven’ hypothesis, which predicts displacement of the environmental burden from developed to emerging countries. The pursuit by developing countries of a long-term strategy of ‘trading jobs for emissions' is likely to exacerbate the asymmetry related to emissions intensities between developed and less developed economies. The review should inform debate on environmental policy within the broader context of innovation and development policies

A Two-Stage DEA Model to Evaluate the Technical Eco-Efficiency Indicator in the EU Countries

This paper evaluates the evolution of eco-efficiency for the 27 European Union (EU) countries over the period 2008–2018, provided the traditional high concerns of the EU concerning the economic growth-environmental performance relationship. The EU has triggered several initiatives and regulations regarding environmental protection over the years, but as well the Sustainable Development Goals demand it. Under this setting, we conduct a two-stage analysis, which computes eco-efficiency scores in the first stage for each of the pairs EU 27-year, through the nonparametric method data envelopment analysis (DEA), considering the ratio GDP per capita and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). In the second stage, scores are used as a dependent variable in the proposed fractional regression model (FRM), whose determinants considered were eight pollutants (three greenhouse gases and five atmospheric pollutants). CO2/area and N2O/area effects are negative and significant, improving the eco-efficiency of the EU 27 countries. When the efficient European countries are excluded from the estimations, the results evidence that CO2/area and CH4/area decrease the DEA score. The country with the lowest GHG emissions and pollutant gases was Ireland, being the country within the considered period that mostly reduced emissions, particularly SOx and PM10, increasing its score.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Does Urban Proximity Enhance Technical Efficiency in Agriculture? Evidence from China

This paper assesses whether cities enhance technical efficiency of nearby rural counties, by allowing for heterogeneous urban effects both by regions and by city type. An empirical application is demonstrated using the Chinese county-level agricultural data from 2005 to 2009. Cities are found to produce very significant spread effects on counties in Coastal provinces. Yet, spread effects are less significant in Central regions and not significant at all in the less developed regions of Western China. In addition, urban effects also vary across the urban hierarchy as we found that provincial-level cities have a deteriorating impact on technical efficiency, while lower-level cities enhance technical efficiency in most regions. Implications of these findings in terms of urban and regional planning are discussed