China's ocean economic efficiency depends on environmental integrity: A global slacks-based measure

Abstract

Absolute This paper measures the regional oceanic economic performance in China's 11 coastal areas from 2007 to 2014 using a dynamic growth efficiency framework. We construct a new global Malmquist ocean performance index (GMOPI), which integrates the global benchmark technology with the slacks-based measure (SBM) and Malmquist-Luenberger (ML) productivity index. This index can successfully eliminate a common infeasibility problem encountered in ML cross-period problem. Furthermore, the labour input, capital input, economic output, and environmental output contribution indexes are proposed by internally decomposing the GMOPI, which can explain which factor could bias technological progress. The empirical results indicate two different modes of China's oceanic economic growth during the examined time period, i.e., a volatility phase (2007–2010) and a stability phase (2011–2014). Moreover, the factor contribution indexes show that the low contribution scores for environmental integrity and capital in the volatility phase. The findings highlight the need for the further strengthening of environmental and investment policies in China.