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Measuring Environmental Performance Under Regional Heterogeneity in China: A Metafrontier Efficiency Analysis

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An Erratum to this article was published on 30 September 2015

Abstract

This paper examines total-factor environmental performance for various regions in China based on the metafrontier directional distance function. This approach can measure the environmental performance of undesirable outputs (pollutants). Technological heterogeneity can be taken into account simultaneously by taking a metafrontier approach. First, the concept of a generalized metafrontier directional distance function is proposed for the model. Second, several standardized composite indicators of environmental performance are developed. Third, the metafrontier directional distance function is estimated by solving a series of data envelopment analysis models. Finally, various regions in China are empirically examined, and the results and their implications are discussed. The results indicate substantial heterogeneity in environmental performance across regions, and some policy suggestions are proposed based on these results.

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Notes

  1. The DDF is based on the weak-disposability for modeling undesirable outputs. Recently, there are some relative new methodologies for modeling environmental technology such as pollution-generating technologies (Murty et al. 2012) or nutrients balance approach (Hoang and Nguyen 2013).

  2. To measure the environmental performance, we selected \(\hbox {SO}_{2}\) emissions, COD, and \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emissions as three outputs, because these pollutants are regulated in the 11th Five-Year Plan and have their own reduction targets.

  3. The arithmetic average of variable numbers is widely used as the weights (Zhou et al. 2012), alternatively, the range-adjusted measure (RAM) approach could be also employed for deciding the weight for DDF.

  4. To conduct the convergence test of environmental technology gap for China’s regions using regression is an interesting extension for this study. We thank one referee for suggesting this issue.

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Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous referees for the very useful suggestions on an earlier draft of this article. We also thank the financial support provided by the Major Project of National Social Science Foundation, China (12&ZD213), the National Science Foundation of China (41461118), the China Postdoctoral Foundation (2014M551849), and the start-up research fund of JUFE (61152012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business Administration, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang,  330013, China

    Yanni Yu

  2. Department of International Trade and Regional Studies, Inha University, Inharo100, Nam-gu, Inchon, 402-751, Korea

    Yongrok Choi

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  1. Yanni Yu
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Correspondence to Yongrok Choi.

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Yu, Y., Choi, Y. Measuring Environmental Performance Under Regional Heterogeneity in China: A Metafrontier Efficiency Analysis. Comput Econ 46, 375–388 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10614-014-9464-5

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