Assessing multi-dimensional performance: environmental and economic outcomes

This study examines economic performance, environmental performance, and regulatory activity for plants in three industries: pulp and paper, oil, and steel. Stochastic frontier production function models show significant deviations from production efficiency. Older plants are less efficient in production, but perform no worse on emissions. Plants spending more on pollution abatement tend to do worse on both production efficiency and emissions. Stricter local regulatory pressure is associated with somewhat lower emissions, but has mixed effects on production efficiency. Positive correlations between SUR residuals for emissions and production efficiency suggest unmeasured plant-level characteristics that drive both economic and environmental performance.

Externalities, efficiency, regulation, and productivity growth in the U.S. electric utility industry

This paper examines the decomposition of total factor productivity growth for firms subject to regulation, given the production of a bad output. The production of good and bad outputs provides benefits and costs to society. Corporate socially responsible firms recognize the cost to society of producing the bad output. The paper separates the production technology and regulation effects from both the scale and technical change components. The paper also examines the measurement and decomposition of productivity growth when not accounting for production of the bad output. Using a 1992–2000 panel of 34 U.S. investor-owned electric utilities, results indicate that improvements in the scale, efficiency change, and technical change components contributed to positive growth. Not accounting for production of the bad output led to, on average, an overestimation of both the rate of productivity growth, and the contributions of scale economies and technical change to changes in productivity growth.

金融危机传染实证研究

本文在梳理金融危机传染的定义,分析金融危机传染的机理,介绍Copula函数的金融危机传染检验方法的基础上,通过运用多种静态Copula和动态Copula函数对金融危机传染进行了分析。主要结论包括三个方面：一是金融危机时期,中国股市下跌与美国股市下跌在一定程度上存在联动,但中国股市的波动也有一定独立性;二是全球金融危机后,国内股市和债市呈现显著负相关性关系;三是从国内金融机构看,不论是否处于危机期间,国有商业银行之间、国有商业银行与中小型银行之间的风险传染并不明显,中小型银行之间风险传染较强,但不是由金融危机引起的,而是由其他因素导致。     

城市人口密度、国内市场规模与就业增长

本文以空间经济学的本土市场效应为理论基础并加以拓展,说明了像我国这样的大国,就业增长的一个重要途径是扩大国内市场规模,继而提出减少行政干预、提高城市人口密度、提高消费效率的建议。     

Technical efficiency of UK airports

In this paper, the random stochastic frontier model is used to estimate the technical efficiency of UK airports. The airports are ranked according to their productivity for the period 2000–2005 and homogenous and heterogeneous variables in the cost function are disentangled. These changes the ranking of the efficiency of UK airports compared to more conventional measures.     

协调度视角下长江流域产业转移效率研究

实现区域经济协调发展是当前我国在块集聚与点极化双重压力下面临的现实难题，长江经济带尤其是欠发达省份承接发达地区产业转移是解决该难题的必然路径选择。产业转移活动因区域主客体特征变量不同，呈现出典型的多发式转移和门槛转移特征，使得区域政策制定缺乏科学指导，陷入盲目拼政策红利的状态。结合效率模型及考虑熵权的经济社会发展协同度分析，测算了2004-2016长江经济带各省（市）年综合产业转移效率，并考察了门槛效应值及变化趋势。结果表明：在考察期内，长江经济带各省（市）产业转移效率提升较为明显，但不少省（市）存在不协调的阶段性平衡关系，且这种关系还未显露经济总量驱动下的协同发展能力。     

Persistence of Price–Cost Margin and Technical Efficiency in the Indonesian Food and Beverage Industry

Abstract

This research investigates the persistence of price–cost margin (PCM) and technical efficiency (TE) of firms and the relation between these two factors in 44 subsectors of the Indonesian food and beverage industry in the period 1980–2014. Data envelopment analysis with a bootstrapping approach is applied to estimate TE. An autoregressive model, accounting for endogeneity, is applied to estimate the persistence coefficients of PCM and TE. A cross-sectional regression model is also applied to estimate the relation between the persistence of the PCM and the persistence of TE. The results show that for these food and beverage firms, high PCM and low TE persist. Furthermore, the persistence of PCM negatively affects the persistence of TE in the industry.     

Agricultural productivity growth in Brazil: Large and small farms excel

The long-standing debate on the relationship between farm size and productivity has been generally limited by the range of farm sizes evaluated and the definition of productivity. In this paper we use data from three Brazilian agricultural censuses to address these issues. In particular, we introduce a wider distribution of farm sizes than presently available from the literature and we employ total factor productivity (TFP) as our performance measure. In doing so, we test which farm size class had the highest TFP levels in 1985 and 2006, how factor productivity growth varied within and across farm size classes between those years, and which policy or factor had the greatest productivity enhancing effect. When examining TFP growth, we move beyond the common decomposition into technical and efficiency changes by identifying the complete distribution of farm productivity performances. We find that by 2006 a U-shaped distribution of productivity over farm sizes had emerged. Considerable 1985–2006 TFP growth differences are prevalent; positive rates for the majority accompany stagnant or negative rates for some. Public education investments were associated with faster productivity growth regardless of farm size, while technical assistance’s positive effect and credit’s negative effect were associated with larger farm sizes. The role of specialization varied by size.     

能源效率、环境污染与中国经济发展方式转变

以往研究虽然关注了能源效率与经济发展之间的关系,但却忽略了能源利用过程中环境污染的改善对经济发展方式转变的影响。本文将环境变量纳入能源效率分析框架内,采用EBM-DEA模型测算了中国各地区能源效率,并利用动态空间面板模型,实证考察了环境约束下的能源效率对中国经济发展方式转变的影响。研究结果显示,中国经济发展方式具有明显的空间相关性和路径依赖性;与未考虑环境污染相比,环境约束下的能源效率对经济发展方式转变的影响更为明显,这也在一定程度上表明,如果不考虑能源效率提升的环境污染改善效应,将会低估其对经济发展方式转变的影响。本文结论为提升中国能源效率水平,加快经济发展方式转变提供政策启示。     

Subsidies under uncertainty: Modeling of input- and output-oriented policies

Agricultural subsidies play an essential role in agricultural and rural development in many developed economies. Countries have implemented agricultural subsidy policies with a focus on food security and environmental protection. Agricultural production is risky and uncertain, influencing the efficiency of agricultural subsidies. This study develops a theoretical framework to analyze the effects of production uncertainties on the efficiency of agricultural subsidy policies under the double constraints of food security and environmental protection. The basic model is investigated under six different conditions, and expanded research also is presented. Our models show that uncertainty, including output, cost, and price uncertainties, and technology conversion efficiency significantly affects the efficiency of agricultural subsidies. Under high technology conversion efficiency, output-oriented subsidies are appropriate for food security and environmental protection goals. Policymakers should take both uncertainty and production efficiency into consideration when choosing between input-oriented and output-oriented subsidy policies.