Dynamic environmental performance analysis: A Malmquist index approach

This article presents a general framework for dynamic environmental performance analysis by generalizing the approach proposed by Kuosmanen and Kortelainen [Kuosmanen, T., Kortelainen, M., 2005. Measuring Eco-Efficiency of Production with Data Envelopment Analysis. Journal of Industrial Ecology 9(4), 59-72.] from a static to a dynamic setting. For this purpose we construct an environmental performance index (EPI) by applying frontier efficiency techniques and a Malmquist index approach. Compared to other dynamic environmental productivity and efficiency analysis approaches based on these methods, our approach builds on the standard definition of eco-efficiency as it is presented in the ecological economics literature. Recognizing the importance to analyze the sources of environmental performance changes, we show how changes in overall environmental performance can be decomposed into changes in relative eco-efficiency and shifts in environmental technology, respectively. We apply the presented technique at the macro level to dynamic environmental performance analysis of 20 member states of the European Union in 1990-2003. According to the results, environmental technical change mostly explains the improvement in overall environmental performance, while relative eco-efficiency change has been minor for most countries during the sample period.     

Eco-efficient environmental policy in oil and gas production in The Netherlands

This article presents the quantitative eco-efficiency method developed for prioritising environmental investments in NOGEPA, The Netherlands Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Association involving all major oil and gas producers in The Netherlands. They are committed to a high level of environmental improvement in a Covenant with Dutch central government. Quantitative assessment of eco-efficiency in terms of cost per unit of environmental improvement requires the quantification of both costs and environmental impacts, each in a single indicator. The present study focuses on the development of a single environmental indicator for that purpose. The overall process for arriving at such an indicator has been structured according to ISO 14042 about the life cycle impact assessment. For the last step in this process, the establishment of weighting factors across environmental themes, a panel method has been chosen, involving as stakeholders the government officials involved, the industry experts and independent experts from scientific institutes.     

绿色增长视角下不可再生能源效率测度模型的构建及实证分析

系统整合MFA方法、DEA方法和生态效率评价法,构建了绿色增长视角下的全要素不可再生能源效率测度模型。定义了全要素不可再生能源效率测度指标体系,其中投入指标包括不可再生能源、人力资源、资本资源、科技资源以及不可再生能源的隐藏流,产出指标包括经济价值和环境正影响。对1953—2012年中国的全要素不可再生能源效率以及不可再生能源的经济效率、环境效率和生态效率进行了测算和分析。研究结果表明:所构建的全要素不可再生能源效率测度模型不仅可用于测算全要素不可再生能源效率,而且可用于测算不可再生能源在开发和利用过程中的经济价值、环境影响和生态代价,是一个符合绿色增长理念的、较科学而全面的不可再生能源效率测度模型。     

中国新能源企业政府环境研发补贴的动态激励效应

选取2011—2017年中国新能源行业122家上市公司面板数据，建立面板向量自回归模型（PVAR），通过研究政府环境研发补贴、企业研发投入和环境绩效之间的动态交互关系，考察政府补贴对企业创新的激励效应以及补贴的配置合理性问题。结果表明：一方面，环境研发补贴对企业研发投入和环境绩效均存在滞后1~4年的影响。政府补贴促进企业研发投入，非国企比国企显著；政府补贴对环境绩效的影响在不同产权性质企业中存在较大差异，补贴显著抑制了国企环境绩效，但有效促进了非国企环境绩效。另一方面，企业研发投入与环境绩效对于后续政府补贴投入分别具有滞后1~4年和1~2年的正向反馈作用。针对国企，政府补贴决策是结果导向的，即更关注其环境绩效；对于非国企，政府补贴决策偏好过程导向，即更多地考察企业对研发活动的投入情况。研究结论可为完善中国新能源企业环境补贴政策，提高新能源企业环境研发水平和环境绩效提供参考。     

中国新能源企业政府环境研发补贴的动态激励效应

选取2011—2017年中国新能源行业122家上市公司面板数据,建立面板向量自回归模型（PVAR）,通过研究政府环境研发补贴、企业研发投入和环境绩效之间的动态交互关系,考察政府补贴对企业创新的激励效应以及补贴的配置合理性问题。结果表明：一方面,环境研发补贴对企业研发投入和环境绩效均存在滞后1~4年的影响。政府补贴促进企业研发投入,非国企比国企显著;政府补贴对环境绩效的影响在不同产权性质企业中存在较大差异,补贴显著抑制了国企环境绩效,但有效促进了非国企环境绩效。另一方面,企业研发投入与环境绩效对于后续政府补贴投入分别具有滞后1~4年和1~2年的正向反馈作用。针对国企,政府补贴决策是结果导向的,即更关注其环境绩效;对于非国企,政府补贴决策偏好过程导向,即更多地考察企业对研发活动的投入情况。研究结论可为完善中国新能源企业环境补贴政策,提高新能源企业环境研发水平和环境绩效提供参考。     

我国区域能源效率及其影响因素研究

如何以较少的能源消耗实现现代化战略目标,是我国必须解决的问题。为了有效提高能源效率,我们有必要弄清楚我国能源效率现状及其影响因素之间的关系。本文首先把环境因素加入到考量能源效率的指标体系当中,对能源效率重新定义,接着通过构建结构方程模型,分析了经济结构、技术进步、制度（能源市场化）、交通运输、工业能源投资等方面对能源效率的影响程度,测算出能源效率与其影响因素之间的关系。通过实证研究发现：从各因素对能源效率的贡献比重来看,市场化程度和对外开放影响系数最大;其次是交通运输,技术进步;而经济结构对能源效率的影响系数呈反向关系,其中第二产业比重在经济结构中影响较大。说明市场化程度、对外开放程度、技术水平的提高和交通运输的提升都会促进我国能源效率的提高。技术进步因素对我国能源效率的正向作用有待于进一步加强。     

先进制造业绿色技术创新效率及其环境规制门槛效应

利用非强制性幅度调整与随机前沿函数构建先进制造业绿色技术创新三阶段效率测度模型,引入经济水平、公众素质、政府扶持强度作为环境变量,基于全国内地30个省市2006-2016年先进制造业面板数据对其绿色技术创新效率进行测度,同时选取门槛计量模型解析正式、非正式环境规制的影响机理。结果表明,效率评估中规制因素与统计噪音可造成测度结果产生偏差,环境变量对投入与产出松弛存在差异性波动影响,而松弛变量调整前后可使多数地区绿色技术创新效率排名发生改变;在全国先进制造业绿色技术创新效率整体呈稳步提升态势下,总体效率依然偏低,而且在空间布局上形成“三大梯度”,具备显著的“都市联动效应”;正式与非正式环境规制对先进制造业绿色技术创新效率均存在单门槛值,但分别呈“U”型与倒“U”型关系,而资本密集度、行业利润率等对先进制造业绿色技术创新效率均呈显著正向推进作用。     

区域生态经济评价模型及实证研究

生态效率是基于环境一经济系统相互关系的定量描述，搭建了经济效益和环境效益之间的桥梁。基于区域生态效率增长与环保投入的平衡关系，本文构建了区域生态经济评价模型，以反映一个地区在一定环保投入条件下的环境改善效果，并对中国30个城市的经济环境协调状况进行综合评价，力求为现阶段中国区域生态经济状况提供新的可行评价方法。     

Justifying the incorporation of the materials balance principle into frontier-based eco-efficiency models

Frontier-based models are an alternative to traditional eco-efficiency ratio indicators. This paper considers two different types, environmentally adjusted production efficiency models and frontier eco-efficiency models, and tries to find justification for incorporating the materials balance principle (MBP) in them. Similar importance is attached to the economic and environmental outcomes of a production process. Like economic outcomes can be derived from inputs and outputs and respective prices, some cases allow for deriving environmental outcomes from the production function with the MBP. After an overview of attempts to incorporate environmental issues in production efficiency models and some reflections why MBP has been neglected in environmental economics and production efficiency analysis, the paper gives basic principles to incorporate the MBP in conventional production efficiency methods and shows how this adjustment leads to a more diversified diagnosis of eco-efficiency. Finally, potentialities and bottlenecks are discussed. Exploiting the MBP in production efficiency and eco-efficiency analysis will facilitate more pro-active eco-efficiency research.     

创新溢出如何影响我国省际环境全要素生产率 ——基于DEA-ESDA方法的实证分析

基于2008-2017年省际面板数据,运用非径向、非角度的SBM—DDF模型和GML指数,测算了内地30个省市的环境全要素生产率,借助引力模型,对区域创新溢出进行了量化和空间网络结构分析,进一步搭建空间计量模型,实证分析了创新溢出对我国省际环境全要素生产率的影响。研究结果表明,环境全要素生产率存在显著的空间正相关性;创新溢出能够有效促进GTFP增长,技术进步为主要影响路径;技术市场化水平提升有助于GTFP增长;经济发展和对外开放水平仅对本区域GTFP起促进作用;人力资本水平和环境规制显著制约了GTFP发展;人力资本水平、对外开放水平、环境规制强度对技术效率改善存在显著负向影响。     

Data envelopment analysis for measuring economic growth in terms of welfare beyond GDP

Recent discussions about the definition of growth in terms of welfare beyond GDP suggest that it is of urgent need to develop new approaches for measuring the economic performance of firms and national economies. The new concepts should simultaneously take into account economic as well as social and environmental goals. First we present several approaches to productivity measures. Then we extend the data envelopment analysis models with environment indicators in order to measure the so called eco-efficiency and social indicators to take into consideration social performance. For illustration, we perform the analysis of 30 European countries for the year 2010. The last section concerns itself with the possibilities of inter-temporal analysis of the proposed models and their use in ex-ante evaluation of different policy scenarios.     

中国地区工业的生态效率测度及趋同分析：2003—2010年

生态效率兼顾经济活动的生态效益和经济效益,在一定程度上反映了经济可持续发展水平,其综合评价有助于探索经济发展方式转变的路径。2003—2010年中国大陆31个省份的工业生态效率测度及趋同分析表明：我国工业生态效率普遍偏低,其省际差异和年际变化差异都较大,而且存在明显的生态效率趋同。为进一步改善我国各省的工业生态效率,既要广泛搭建技术转移平台以促进先进技术推广,还要大力提高落后地区的技术能力以促进先进技术的充分吸收和利用。     

It is not easy being a Green party: Green politics as a normal good

An extensive body of literature shows that voters often credit or blame ruling political parties for economic successes and failures, respectively. This paper presents a related, but new possibility: whether local economic conditions impact Green party electoral outcomes. According to the environmental Kuznets curve, high-income countries will see decreased environmental degradation as they become wealthier, but it is yet to be seen whether this relationship is carried over to environmentally friendly political parties. Using a panel data set that includes over 250 elections from 26 European countries, we find that elections held during times of economic growth increase the vote share that Green parties win. This effect is especially robust for national elections, as opposed to elections for the European Parliament. The magnitudes are large enough to potentially alter the number of seats Green parties have in national legislatures. This provides evidence that Green parties are most likely to gain seats when the economy is growing, and support for the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve.     

From groundless universalism to grounded generalism: improving ecological economic indicators of human–environmental interaction

Ecological economics occasionally makes universal claims about how to understand and measure change in systems of human–environmental interaction. In terms of environmental policy, one of the most influential universal concepts that has come out of the ecological economics literature recently is ecological efficiency (or eco-efficiency). This article uses eco-efficiency as a vehicle to illustrate that universal indicators of human–environmental interaction are theoretically unfounded and practically problematic. Population ecology and neo-classical economics are identified as two theoretical approaches that have contributed to the emergence of universal concepts such as eco-efficiency. The limited applicability of the approaches is highlighted by putting them in comparative context with approaches that make less universal claims, namely, systems ecology and institutional economics. Investigating indicators of human–environmental interaction from disciplinary perspectives that are rarely found in indicator literature offers novel insights on what indicators are for and how they should be applied. The article concludes with a call for scale sensitive generalization in the development of future indicators.     

Environmental efficiency and labour productivity: Trade-off or joint dynamics? A theoretical investigation and empirical evidence from Italy using NAMEA

In this paper we test an adapted EKC hypothesis to verify the relationship between ‘environmental efficiency’ (namely emissions per unit of value added) and labour productivity (value added per employee). We exploit NAMEA data on Italy for 29 sector branches and 6 categories of air emissions for the period 1991-2001. We employ data on capital stock and trade openness to test the robustness of our results.On the basis of the theoretical and empirical analyses focusing on innovation, firm performances and environmental externalities, we would expect a positive correlation between environmental efficiency and labour productivity — a negative correlation between the emissions intensity of value added and labour productivity — which departs from the conventional mainstream view. The hypothesis tested is a critical one within the longstanding debate on the potential trade-off or complementarity between environmental preservation and economic performance, which is strictly associated with the role of technological innovation. We find that for most air emission categories there is a positive relationship between labour productivity and environmental efficiency. Labour productivity dynamics, then, seem to be complementary to a decreasing emissions intensity in the production process. Taking a disaggregate sector perspective, we show that the macro-aggregate evidence is driven by sector dynamics in a non-homogenous way across pollutants. Services tend always to show a ‘complementary’ relationship, while industry seems to be associated with inverted U-shape dynamics for greenhouse gases and nitrogen oxides. This is in line with our expectations. In any case, EKC shapes appear to drive such productivity links towards complementarity. The extent to which this evidence derives from endogenous market forces, industrial and structural change, and policy effects is discussed by taking an evolutionary perspective to innovation and by referring to impure public goods arguments.     

The effect of environmental and social performance on the stock performance of european corporations

This paper examines the effect of sustainability performance of European corporations on their stock performance, measured as the average monthly stock return from 1996 to 2001. The econometric analysis is based on common empirical asset pricing models, particularly on the multifactor model according to Fama and French (1993, Journal of Financial Economics, 33:3–56). The consideration of sustainability performance is two-fold: The average sustainability performance of the industry in which a corporation operates and the relative sustainability performance of a corporation within a given industry. The main result is that the average environmental performance of the industry has a significantly positive influence on the stock performance. In contrast, the average social performance of the industry has a significantly negative influence. The variables of the relative environmental or social performance of a corporation within a given industry have no significant effect on the stock performance. As a by-product, the econometric analysis implies that some results of Fama and French (1993, 1996, The Journal of Finance, LI (1):55–84) regarding the risk factors of the multifactor model need not hold true for different observation periods, for different stock markets, and for the use of single stocks (instead of portfolios). An erratum to this article can be found at     

Environmental Policy with Endogenous Technology from a Game Theoretic Perspective: The Case of the US Pulp and Paper Industry

The merits of different types of regulatory tools in eliminating pollution and at the same time inducing innovation have long been an interest of researchers in both environmental economics and industrial organization. Although there is a substantial theoretical literature investigating the potential for various environmental policies to attain these dual goals, this is a challenging empirical problem because every industry has its own inherent characteristics that play an important role in determining the performance of different regulatory tools. The majority of the work to date focuses on pollution abatement while leaving pollution prevention understudied. In most of the literature firms are also assumed to be symmetric. Asymmetries among firms add another degree and level of complexity to their strategic interactions, and affect the performance of different regulatory tools. This paper investigates the performance of two alternative regulatory tools, an emissions performance standard and an emissions tax, in reducing pollution and inducing pollution prevention and abatement R&D in the US pulp and paper industry. We construct a model representing the industry in an asymmetric Cournot duopoly framework, calibrate the model to disaggregated industry data, and run scenarios to replicate the behavior of the firms in an imperfectly competitive output market. Our results suggest that pollution prevention R&D can respond quite differently than abatement R&D to different policy instruments. The results indicate that R&D spillovers among firms play crucial role in technology development and strategies of the firms. Our results also suggest that strategic interactions between firms in an imperfectly competitive industry can have significant impacts of the levels of both types of R&D.      

The material basis of the global economy: Worldwide patterns of natural resource extraction and their implications for sustainable resource use policies

Material flow accounting and analysis (MFA) has been established as an influential framework for quantifying the use of natural resources by modern societies. So far, however, no reference data for overall scale and trends of global extraction of natural resources and their distribution between different world regions has been available. This paper presents the first comprehensive quantification of the material basis of the global economy, i.e. used domestic extraction in a time series from 1980 to 2002. We analyse time trends for major material groups (fossil fuels, metals, industrial and construction minerals, and biomass) disaggregated into seven world regions. This allows for (a) an illustration of the global economy's physical growth driven by worldwide processes of economic integration over the past decades, and (b) an indication of the worldwide distribution of environmental pressures associated with material extraction. The results show that annual resource consumption of the world economy increased by about one third between 1980 and 2002. This indicates that scale effects due to economic growth more than compensated for other effects, such as the relative increase of the service sectors' contribution to GDP (structural effect) and the use of new production technologies with higher material and energy efficiency (technology effect). The observed growth of natural resource extraction is unevenly distributed over the main material categories, with metals showing the highest growth rate. The regional analysis shows the increasing importance of Asia and Latin America in global resource extraction. On the global level, material intensity, i.e. resource extraction per unit of GDP, decreased by about 25%, indicating relative decoupling of resource extraction from economic growth. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for a more sustainable use of natural resources.     

Environmental performance,corruption and economic growth: global evidence using a new data set

This study investigates the relationship between environmental performance, corruption and economic growth using panel data of 87 countries covering the period from 2002 to 2012. The Environmental Performance Index is used for the first time to evaluate the environmental quality on economic growth. By employing both ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ panel models, we find that environmental performance is positively related to economic growth and is more significant in non-Organization for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) countries. Moreover, when corruption is incorporated, the empirical estimation results indicate that although lower corruption helps economic growth in non-OECD countries, the negative coefficients of the three interactive terms show that the positive effect of environment performance on economic growth will drop, while greater environmental performance combined with natural resource abundance inevitably leads to inefficient bureaucracies and hence disadvantageous economic growth. As a result, policymakers in non-OECD countries should carefully ensure better government quality when they exhibit strong environmental performance so as to avoid any disadvantageous impact upon economic growth.     

高技术产业绿色技术创新效率及其规模质量门槛效应

提高绿色技术创新能力是新时期推进产业高质量发展的重要途径。基于2008－2017年全国内地28省市面板数据,引入政府扶持强度、地区经济发展水平和科技水平等环境变量,利用随机前沿函数构建高技术产业绿色技术创新三阶段组合效率测度模型,并在此基础上构建面板门槛模型实证分析企业规模质量对绿色技术创新效率的影响机理。研究表明,政府扶持强度、地区经济发展水平和科技水平对高技术产业绿色技术创新效率表现出显著异质性影响,而在消除环境因素造成的统计偏差后,国内高技术产业绿色技术创新效率在测度期内呈稳步提升态势,但尚有较大提升空间;高技术产业绿色技术创新效率存在明显的地域空间差异特征,其中东部地区居高,中西部及东北部地区相对较低;此外,高技术产业企业规模质量对绿色技术创新效率具有双重门槛效应,产业集聚、市场环境、劳动者素质对绿色技术创新效率具有显著正向影响,而外资依存度作用不明显。