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.     

Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Toward the system theory of dependence: Further general theoretical remarks

This paper forms another part of a more extensive study inspired by the authors' aims to contribute to the elaboration of the social systems theory of dependence and to better understand the behavior of the global system of human beings and of its subsystems. The theory of dependence, by elaborating an abstract theoretical model of the dependence space, aims at a better understanding of social change (or resistance to change) on the micro, medium and macro-levels of the social systems. In this paper some features of a crude model have been presented at a high level of abstraction. A minimum set of concepts, such as dependence relation, dependence coupling, dependence boundary, dependence capacity, entropy of behavior, systems need relations and possibilities, etc., have been defined and formalized. Some propositions have been formulated. We hope that, in spite of the high level of abstraction and of an insufficient amount of data supporting our propositions which are based mainly on the general systems taxonomy and on the hypothetical-deductive method, the conclusions will have some heuristic value for further inquiries into the theory of modelling the guidance systems of social processes.     

Cost efficiency of Slovenian water distribution utilities: an application of stochastic frontier methods

This study estimates cost inefficiency and economies of scale of Slovenian water distribution utilities over the 1997–2003 period by employing several different stochastic frontier methods. The results indicate that significant cost inefficiencies are present in the utilities. An introduction of incentive-based price regulation scheme might help resolve this problem. However, the inefficiency scores obtained from different cost frontier models are not found to be robust. The levels of inefficiency estimates as well as the rankings depend on the econometric specification of the model. The established lack of robustness can be at least partly explained by different ability of the models to separate unobserved heterogeneity from inefficiency. Newly proposed true fixed effects model (Greene, J Econom 126:269–303, 2005; J Prod Anal 23(1):7–32, 2005) appears to perform better than the conventional panel data models with respect to distinguishing between unobserved heterogeneity and inefficiency. On the other hand, different models produce fairly robust results with respect to estimates of economies of output density, customer density and economies of scale. The optimal size of a company is found to closely corresponds to the sample median. Economies of scale are found in small-sized utilities, while large companies exhibit diseconomies of scale.

The impact of China's imports on European Union industrial employment

As the EU's biggest supplier of imported goods and a second trading partner, China has become an increasingly important actor on the global economic scene. This paper reports new evidence through analyzing whether the EU labour market is affected by exposure to imports from China. Drawing on a panel dataset of 27 EU countries, over the 2003–2013 period, and using the pooled mean group estimator, the results show that imports from China have a negative effect on industrial employment. This result holds separately for the all analyzed categories: all products, manufactured products as well as for the sub‐groups.     

Sources of productivity differentials in manufacturing in post-transition urban South-East Europe

The paper analyses the effects of urbanization and localisation economies on manufacturing firms’ productivity across urban landscapes in post-transition South-East European (SEE) countries. Fixed-effects panel data estimations on a large sample of firms show that the factors accounting for productivity advantages of manufacturing firms in urban post-transition SEE are related to the firms and to the environment in which these firms operate. Firms located in diversified cities benefit from a productivity premium generated in this type of agglomeration, while no evidence was found that the relative specialization across industries has any effect on firm productivity levels.     

Measuring the effectiveness of cost and price competitiveness in external rebalancing of euro area countries: What do alternative HCIs tell us?

This study examines the marginal effects of traditional determinants of exports and imports with a focus on the role of price competitiveness in restoring external balances in the euro area. It is a first attempt to compare marginal effects of various harmonised competitiveness indicators (HCIs) on both exports and imports of both goods and services across individual euro area countries. We find evidence that HCIs based on broader cost and price measures have a larger marginal effect (with some exceptions) on exports of goods. Exports of services are sensitive to HCIs in big euro area countries and Slovakia, where exports of services are also found more sensitive to competitiveness indicators based on broader price measures. Imports of goods and imports of services are quite insensitive to changes in relative prices. Finally, in some cases measures of fit indicate that a large unexplained residual part is present, implying that other non-price related factors might play an important role in driving foreign trade and policies aimed at enhancing the quality of goods traded are warranted.