Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T15:01:17.343Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Measurement of environmental efficiency and productivity: a cross-country analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2009

SURENDER KUMAR  and
MADHU KHANNA
SURENDER KUMAR
Affiliation:
Faculty of Business Administration, Yokohama National University, 79-4, Tokiwadai, Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-0067Japan, and Department of Policy Studies, TERI University, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003India. E-mail: [email protected]
MADHU KHANNA
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 440 Mumford Hall, 1301W. Gregory Dr., Urbana, IL 61801USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper measures environmental efficiency (EE) and environmental productivity (EP) in 38 countries over the period 1971–92 and analyzes differences in these across countries. It explores several macro-economic factors that could explain these differences, such as income levels and the degree of openness in these countries. The average EE and EP indexes are found to be almost steady over the period 1971–92. In the annex-I countries, an increase in income levels initially leads to an increase in the average EE but subsequently to a decline in EE. In non-annex I countries, EE is increasing over the range of income in these countries. This study also finds an EKC type relationship between EP and per capita GDP in annex-I countries. The degree of openness has a significant positive impact on EE in annex-I countries.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , August 2009 , pp. 473 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atkinson, S.E. and Dorfman, R.H. (2005), ‘Bayesian measurement of productivity and efficiency in the presence of undesirable outputs: crediting electric utilities for reducing air pollution’, Journal of Econometrics 126: 445–468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berg, A. and Krueger, A. (2003), ‘Trade, growth, and poverty: a selective survey’, Working Paper WP/03/30, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2003/wp0330.pdfCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camarero, M., Picazo-Tadeo, A.J., and Tamarit, C. (2008), ‘Is the environmental performance of industrialized countries converging? A “SURE” approach to testing for convergence’, Ecological Economics (in press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chung, Y., Färe, R., and Grosskopf, S. (1997), ‘Productivity and undesirable outputs: a directional distance function approach’, Journal of Environmental Management 51: 229–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cropper, M. and Griffith, C. (1994), ‘The interaction of population growth and environmental quality’, American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings 84: 250–254.Google Scholar
Cropper, M.L. and Oates, W.E. (1992) ‘Environmental economics: a survey’, Journal of Economic Literature 30: 675–740.Google Scholar
Färe, R., Grosskopf, S., Lovell, C.A.K., and Pasurka, C. (1989), ‘Multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable: a non-parametric approach’, Review of Economics and Statistics 71: 90–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Färe, R, Grosskopf, S., Noh, D.W., and Weber, W. (2005), ‘Characteristics of a polluting technology: theory and practice’, Journal of Econometrics 126: 469–492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Färe, R., Grosskopf, S., and Pasurka, C. (2001), ‘Accounting for air pollution emissions in measures of state manufacturing productivity growth’, Journal of Regional Sciences 41: 381–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Färe, R., Grosskopf, S., and Roos, P. (1995), ‘Productivity and quality changes in Swedish pharmacies’, International Journal of Production Economics 39: 137–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Färe, R., Grosskopf, S., and Tyteca, D. (1996), ‘An activity analysis model of the environmental performance of firms-application to fossil-fuel-fired electric utilities’, Ecological Economics 18: 161–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gollop, F.M. and Roberts, M.J. (1983), ‘Environmental regulations and productivity growth: the case of fossil-fuelled electric power generation’, Journal of Political Economy 91: 654–674.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hetemaki, L. (1996), Essays on the Impact of Pollution Control on Firm: A Distance Function Approach, Helsinki: Helsinki Research Center.Google Scholar
Jaffe, A.B., Newell, R.G., and Stavins, R.N. (2003), ‘Technological change and the environment’, in Mäler, K.-G. and Vincent, J. (eds), Handbook of Environmental Economics, Amsterdam: North-Holland, Elsevier Science.Google Scholar
Kopp, G. (1998), ‘Carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth: a structural approach’, Journal of Applied Statistics 25: 489–515.Google Scholar
Kumar, S. (2006), ‘Environmentally sensitive productivity growth: a global analysis using Malmquist–Luenberger index’, Ecological Economics 56: 280–293.Google Scholar
Kumar, S. and Rao, D.N (2003), ‘Environmental regulation and production efficiency: a case study of thermal power sector in India’, Journal of Energy and Development 29: 81–94.Google Scholar
Managi, S., Opaluch, J.J., Jin, D., and Grigalunas, T.A. (2005), ‘Environmental regulations and technological change in the offshore oil and gas industry’, Land Economics 81: 303–319.Google Scholar
Murillo-Zamorano, L.R. (2004), ‘Economic efficiency and frontier techniques’, Journal of Economic Survey 18: 33–77.Google Scholar
Murty, M.N. and Kumar, S. (2002), ‘Measuring cost of environmentally sustainable industrial development in India: a distance function approach’, Environmental and Development Economics 7: 467–486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murty, M.N. and Kumar, S. (2004), Environmental and Economic Accounting for Industry, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Murty, S. and Russell, R. (2002), ‘On modelling pollution generating technologies’, Department of Economics Working Paper 02-14, University of California, Riverside.Google Scholar
Nadiri, M.I. (1970), ‘Some approaches to the theory and measurement of total factor productivity: a survey’, Journal of Economic Literature 8: 1137–1177.Google Scholar
Neumayer, E. and de Soysa, I. (2005), ‘Trade openness, foreign direct investment and child labor’, World Development 33: 43–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pittman, R.W. (1983), ‘Multilateral productivity comparisons with undesirable outputs’, The Economic Journal 93: 883–891.Google Scholar
Reinhard, S., Lovell, C.A.K., and Thijssen, G. (1999), ‘Econometric estimation of technical and environmental efficiency: an application to Dutch dairy farms’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 81: 44–60.Google Scholar
Selden, T. and Song, D. (1994), ‘Environmental quality and development: is there a Kuznets curve for air pollution emissions?’, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 27: 147–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taskin, F. and Zaim, O. (2001), ‘The role of international trade on environmental efficiency: a DEA approach’, Economic Modelling 18: 1–17.Google Scholar
Zaim, O. and Taskin, F. (2000), ‘A Kuznets curve in environmental efficiency: an application on OECD countries’, Environmental and Resource Economics 17: 21–36.Google Scholar
Zofio, J.L. and Prieto, A.M. (2001), ‘Environmental efficiency and regulatory standards: the case of CO2 emissions from OECD countries’, Resource and Energy Economics 23: 63–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar