Department of Economics, University of Patras, Rio, 26504, Patras, Greece.
J Environ Manage. 2021 Apr 1;283:111972. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.111972. Epub 2021 Jan 25.
European policies regarding global warming have been outspread the last few decades with many initiatives focusing on industrial production process. In this paper we model eco-efficiency (ECOE) performance under a metafrontier (MF) framework for 14 industries of the manufacturing sector from 27 European countries over the 1995-2011 period. The utilization of NO, SO, CO, CH, NO, CO, NMVOC and NH as undesirable outputs represent the impact of industrial activities on the environment. In a first stage, we estimate eco-efficiency using a conventional Directional Distance Function (DDF) as well as a non-radial slack-based DDF (DDFS) approach. In the second stage of our analysis, we investigate the existence of conditional and unconditional convergence by employing several methodologies. Our results point out that heavy industries perform eco-inefficiently. In addition, our results support the non-convergence hypothesis and the creation of discrete clubs with uneven characteristics when the distributional dynamics approach and the recent approach of Phillips and Sul (PS) come into play. Finally, the establishment of a catch-up index indicate that technological spillovers do exist but with a small effect.
过去几十年，欧洲出台了多项政策以应对全球变暖问题，其中许多政策都聚焦于工业生产过程。本文利用超前沿（MF）框架，以 1995 年至 2011 年间 27 个欧洲国家的 14 个制造业行业为样本，构建了模型，以测算生态效率（ECOE）。模型将 NO、SO、CO、CH、NO、CO、NMVOC 和 NH 等非期望产出作为工业活动对环境产生的影响的指标。在第一阶段，我们使用传统的方向距离函数（DDF）以及基于非径向松弛的 DDF（DDFS）方法来估算生态效率。在分析的第二阶段，我们采用了多种方法来检验条件收敛和无条件收敛的存在性。研究结果表明，重工业的生态效率较低。此外，我们的结果支持非收敛假设，并表明存在离散俱乐部，这些俱乐部的特征参差不齐，当使用分布动态方法和 Phillips 和 Sul（PS）的最新方法时，这种现象尤为明显。最后，追赶指数的建立表明技术溢出确实存在，但影响较小。
