Measurement of production efficiency and environmental efficiency in China’s province-level: a by-production approach

This paper is based on my first chapter of Phd thesis. The main contribution of this paper is to apply a new by-production approach technologies, which is based on the multiple production relations and can better capture the phenomenon of the pollution generating production process. Under by-production approach, I also employ the modified efficiency indexes to investigate the production and environmental efficiency for 30 provinces in China during 2006 to 2010. From the empirical results, we could find the production efficiency level of each province will vary with the geographical location. And the environmental efficiency levels are significantly affected by SO2 abatement activities and energy intensity, but the environment policy show less robust.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record.The nonconventional by-production approach with respect to the freely disposable inputs but without the weakly disposable and null-joint outputs has been proposed to describe the pollution generating technologies since 2012. To amend the contradictory trade-offs among inputs, intended and unintended outputs, which generate in the previous conventional pollution-generating technologies, the new by-production approach decomposes the general pollution generating technology as classical intended production technology and nature’s residual-generation mechanism. In this paper, some production and environmental efficiency indexes will be extended and firstly applied in the study of regional technical efficiency level with considering the energy utilization and air pollutants emission in China. Based on our calculating results, there exists the obvious variation in the regional technical efficiency level with the regional geographic separation. Eastcoast area ranks the highest in production efficiency measurement, and the West has the lowest levels in both production and environmental efficiency. Through conducting some reason discussions, our new efficiency results based on the by-production approach are consistent with the fact of China's unbalanced regional development pattern and also reveal the ineffectiveness of current environmental policy implementations

A By-production Approach to Studying Environment-constrained Technical and Allocative Inefficiencies and Measuring Marginal Abatement Costs: the Case of China's Provinces

This thesis employs the by-production approach to modelling pollution generating technologies to investigate production and environmental efficiencies, design consumption increasing and emission non-increasing input policy reforms, and derive a measure of marginal abatement costs in the case of China. The second chapter introduces by-production approach to modelling the pollution generating technologies. It decomposes a general pollution generating technology as classical intended production technology and nature’s residual-generation mechanism. In this chapter, some production and environmental efficiency indexes will be extended and applied under by-production approach to study China’s regional technical efficiency incorporated emission generation. According to our estimation results, some reasons analysis and policy implementation suggestions are given. The third chapter co-authored with Professor Sushama Murty proposes a model that gives a key role to the energy sector, and gives a theoretical characterisation for the existence of feasible, consumption-increasing, and emission-non increasing input policy reforms at the status-quo of a national or a sub-national economic unit. A methodology is developed to empirically test for the existence of such efficiency-improving reforms. Formulae to compute the optimal efficiency-increasing reform and a measure of marginal abatement cost (MAC) based on local policy reforms using data available at the status-quo are derived. The fourth chapter co-authored with Professor Sushama Murty implements the methodology developed in the third chapter to test the existence and to study the structure of efficiency-improving reforms using data on thirty provinces in China. A new class of limitational variable elasticity of substitution (LVES) production functions for specifying technologies of the energy-using and energy-generating sectors is introduced and two such production functions are estimated along with the conventional Cobb Douglas and CES production functions. MACs and the optimal efficiency-improving reforms are found to be sensitive to the choice of the production functions employed. There is a huge variation in MACs across provinces. The optimal efficiency-improving reform encourages a substitution from coal-fired electricity generation to gas-fired electricity and renewable energy generation for all provinces. The fifth chapter reviews China’s regional variations in electricity generation, primary energy usage, and forest cover. To better understand the China’s carbon emission control policies, we also briefly introduce the carbon emission scheme implementation. Based on these information, we incorporate the efficiency-improving reforms and MACs estimated in the fourth chapter to analyse the direction of input resources reallocation and give further recommendations for each province

A new composite financial maturity index and its application to China’s province-level regions

This paper introduces a new regional “financial maturity index” (FMI) based on previous studies of financial development theory. We explore a unified measure of regional financial development by constructing a new composite financial maturity model. This paper presents a regional FMI measurement process to study 31 Chinese provincial level regions for the year 2012. Our empirical results correctly reflect the integrated financial development level of different areas, which can be summarized as gradually diminishing as we move from eastern to western areas within China. This trend is also consistent with the characteristics of China’s regional economic and social development

Selection of Optimal Ancestry Informative Markers for Classification and Ancestry Proportion Estimation in Pigs

Using small sets of ancestry informative markers (AIMs) constitutes a cost-effective method to accurately estimate the ancestry proportions of individuals. This study aimed to generate a small and effective number of AIMs from ∼60 K single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data of porcine and estimate three ancestry proportions [East China pig (ECHP), South China pig (SCHP), and European commercial pig (EUCP)] from Asian breeds and European domestic breeds. A total of 186 samples of 10 pure breeds were divided into three groups: ECHP, SCHP, and EUCP. Using these samples and a one-vs.-rest SVM classifier, we found that using only seven AIMs could completely separate the three groups. Subsequently, we utilized supervised ADMIXTURE to calculate ancestry proportions and found that the 129 AIMs performed well on ancestry estimates when pseudo admixed individuals were used. Furthermore, another 969 samples of 61 populations were applied to evaluate the performance of the 129 AIMs. We also observed that the 129 AIMs were highly correlated with estimates using ∼60 K SNP data for three ancestry components: ECHP (Pearson correlation coefficient (r) = 0.94), SCHP (r = 0.94), and EUCP (r = 0.99). Our results provided an example of using a small number of pig AIMs for classifications and estimating ancestry proportions with high accuracy and in a cost-effective manner

Industrial Policy and Innovation Capability of Strategic Emerging Industries: Empirical Evidence from Chinese New Energy Vehicle Industry

Industrial policy is an important tool for developing countries to protect their own industries and improve innovation capabilities. This paper takes China’s new energy vehicle industry as an example, and uses the number of invention patents as a measure of independent innovation capability in order to analyze the impact mechanism of industrial policy on innovation. The estimation results of difference-in-differences and propensity score matching estimations show that the “Ten Cities Thousand Vehicles Project” for promoting the new energy vehicle industry has indeed increased the number of invention patents filed in new energy automobile manufacturers, as compared with traditional automakers. This paper also provides empirical evidence and statistical support for the implementation of industrial policies

Almost Sure Convergence for the Maximum and the Sum of Nonstationary Guassian Sequences

<p/> <p>Let (<inline-formula> <graphic file="1029-242X-2010-856495-i1.gif"/></inline-formula>, <inline-formula> <graphic file="1029-242X-2010-856495-i2.gif"/></inline-formula>) be a standardized nonstationary Gaussian sequence. Let <inline-formula> <graphic file="1029-242X-2010-856495-i3.gif"/></inline-formula> max<inline-formula> <graphic file="1029-242X-2010-856495-i4.gif"/></inline-formula> denote the partial maximum and <inline-formula> <graphic file="1029-242X-2010-856495-i5.gif"/></inline-formula> for the partial sum with <inline-formula> <graphic file="1029-242X-2010-856495-i6.gif"/></inline-formula> (Var <inline-formula> <graphic file="1029-242X-2010-856495-i7.gif"/></inline-formula><inline-formula> <graphic file="1029-242X-2010-856495-i8.gif"/></inline-formula>. In this paper, the almost sure convergence of (<inline-formula> <graphic file="1029-242X-2010-856495-i9.gif"/></inline-formula>, <inline-formula> <graphic file="1029-242X-2010-856495-i10.gif"/></inline-formula>) is derived under some mild conditions.</p

Sovereign ESG and corporate investment: New insights from the United Kingdom

This paper examines the nexus between sovereign environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues and corporate investment decisions from a sustainable perspective. By utilising firm-level balance sheets data, country-level governance and policy uncertainty data, we find country governance has a significant positive effect on firm investment. Moreover, this paper shows that climate and migration policy uncertainty has a statistically and economically significant dampening impact on corporate investment, indicating that environmental and social prospect plays a key role in promoting business investment in the United Kingdom. In addition, the empirical evidence on the moderation analysis of corporate leverage suggests that superior environmental, social, and governance performance can help businesses relieve the burden of debt overhang on firm investment. These results provide several important implications on climate change with the objectives of the COP26 conference

An Improved Modeling and Numerical Analysis Method for Tooth Surface Wear of Double-Arc Harmonic Gears

Tooth surface wear is one of the most common failure modes of harmonic gears, especially in space drive mechanisms. Due to difficulty accurately modeling its wear failure model and the complex mechanism, its dynamic behavior and wear mechanism have not been deeply investigated, and study of the double-arc tooth profile wear model is relative lacking. Therefore, an improved wear modelling and analysis method that is more in line with actual conditions for double-arc harmonic gears is here proposed. Firstly, a tooth surface wear model under mixed elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) was established based on the Archard formula, which combines the Reynolds equation and double-arc tooth profile equation, and considering the meshing offset caused by elastic deformation. Then, the wear analysis method combined with mixed EHL was derived, and numerical simulation analysis of the wear characteristics in lubrication state was carried out, including wear depth calculation and wear output comparison of different tooth profiles. Furthermore, the influence of main working parameters and design parameters on the wear quantity was analyzed. The results show that wear depth for mixed EHL is significantly less than at dry contact. The double-arc tooth profile can withstand more wear cycles than the involute tooth profile, and the input torque and the number of cycles significantly affect the amount of tooth wear. This study further reveals the tooth wear mechanism for harmonic gears, and provides a theoretical basis for the structural optimization design, wear reduction, and life prolonging of harmonic gears