School of Business, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China.
Institute for Open Economy Research Centre, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Feb 25;16(4):675. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16040675.
Since air pollution is an important factor hindering China's economic development, China has passed a series of bills to control air pollution. However, we still lack an understanding of the status of environmental efficiency in regard to air pollution, especially PM (diameter of fine particulate matter less than 2.5 μm) pollution. Using panel data on ten major Chinese city groups from 2004 to 2016, we first estimate the environmental efficiency of PM by epsilon-based measure (EBM) meta-frontier model. The results show that there are large differences in PM environmental efficiency between cities and city groups. The cities with the highest environmental efficiency are the most economically developed cities and the city group with the highest environmental efficiency is mainly the eastern city group. Then, we use the meta-frontier Malmquist EBM model to measure the meta-frontier Malmquist total factor productivity index (MMPI) in each city group. The results indicate that, overall, China's environmental total factor productivity declined by 3.68% and 3.49% when considering or not the influence of outside sources, respectively. Finally, we decompose the MMPI into four indexes, namely, the efficiency change (EC) index, the best practice gap change (BPC) index, the pure technological catch-up (PTCU) index, and the frontier catch-up (FCU) index. We find that the trend of the MMPI is consistent with those of the BPC and PTCU indexes, which indicates that the innovation effect of the BPC and PTCU indexes are the main driving forces for productivity growth. The EC and FCU effect are the main forces hindering productivity growth.
由于空气污染是阻碍中国经济发展的重要因素，中国已通过了一系列法案来控制空气污染。然而，我们仍然缺乏对空气污染环境效率状况的了解，尤其是细颗粒物（PM2.5）污染。本文利用 2004 年至 2016 年中国十大城市群的面板数据，首次采用基于 ε 的测度（EBM）前沿模型估算了 PM 的环境效率。结果表明，城市之间以及城市群之间的 PM 环境效率存在很大差异。环境效率最高的城市是经济最发达的城市，环境效率最高的城市群主要是东部城市群。然后，我们使用前沿 Malmquist EBM 模型测算了每个城市群的前沿 Malmquist 全要素生产率指数（MMPI）。结果表明，总体而言，考虑或不考虑外部因素的影响，中国的环境全要素生产率分别下降了 3.68%和 3.49%。最后，我们将 MMPI 分解为四个指数，即效率变化（EC）指数、最佳实践差距变化（BPC）指数、纯技术追赶（PTCU）指数和前沿追赶（FCU）指数。我们发现，MMPI 的趋势与 BPC 和 PTCU 指数的趋势一致，这表明 BPC 和 PTCU 指数的创新效应是生产力增长的主要驱动力。EC 和 FCU 效应是阻碍生产力增长的主要力量。
