Abstract
Little attention has been paid to international ecological efficiency, especially taking ecological footprint (EF), labor, and capital into account as multi-inputs to produce GDP in the total-factor framework. This study evaluates the total-factor ecological efficiency (TFEcE) of G20 during the period of 1999–2013 by employing slack-based measure (SBM) with EF as the index of comprehensive ecological inputs. Findings show that the average level of TFEcE of G20 from 1999 to 2013 is at a low level of about 0.54, which means there is a large space for the improvement of TFEcE. Furthermore, TFEcE of G20 is very imbalanced and there is a big gap between developed countries and developing countries in the G20. For the developing countries and developed countries in the G20, the analysis of factors that affect national TFEcE shows different statistical significance in the truncated regression model.
Highlights
Efficient ecology consumption is a top priority in the ecological field in terms of both resource conservation and control of climate change
Different from the papers such as Hu and Wang [3] who only took energy into account as ecological inputs in a total-factor framework, and different from the existing papers using ecological footprint (EF) to evaluate single-factor ecology efficiency, this paper considers EF, labor, and capital as multi-inputs to assess the ecological efficiency in a total-factor framework, and we have named this index total-factor ecological efficiency (TFEcE)
The actual ecological inputs could be reduced by almost 46%, with output unchanged, through ecological efficiency improvement. This indicates that the improvement of ecological efficiency is an effective way to maintain economic growth, and to relieve ecological pressure
Summary
Efficient ecology consumption is a top priority in the ecological field in terms of both resource conservation and control of climate change. Accepting declining economic growth as a consequence of decreased ecological consumption is not practicable. Maximizing economic objectives and minimizing ecological concerns, is important for every economy. Ecological efficiency is concerned with creating more value with less impact [1]. Ecological efficiency has always been measured in the presence of the ratio of macroeconomic variables (especially GDP (gross domestic product)) to ecological inputs. Despite the wide-ranging literature that has investigated the relationship between GDP and ecological inputs, most of the studies have focused on utilizing CO2 emissions or energy consumption as an indicator of ecological inputs which just represents a portion of them. To have a better understanding of ecological efficiency, this study will utilize the ecological footprint (EF) as a comprehensive indicator of ecological inputs
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