Improvement In Technical Efficiency Research Articles

Evaluation of Carbon Emission Efficiency of Chinese Oil and Gas Enterprises

This paper constructs a carbon emission efficiency evaluation model using the non-expected output SBM model and the Global-Malmquist-Luenberger model to statically and dynamically evaluate the carbon emission efficiency of 69 oil and gas enterprises from 2016 to 2021. The results found that the overall carbon emission efficiency of China's oil and gas enterprises is at a relatively low level, but with an upward trend. The results also show that there are differences in carbon emission efficiency among oil and gas enterprises, and that the carbon emission efficiency of most oil and gas enterprises improves thanks to the improvement of technical efficiency.

Environmental insurance and green productivity: A firm-level evidence from China

Green transformation is currently a major challenge for both developed and developing economies, while the role of environmental insurance (EI) in green productivity in developing economies remains unclear. Using firm-level data from Chinese A-shape listed companies, this study investigates the relationship between EI on green total factor productivity (GTFP) along the period 2010–2019. To do so, a slack-based measurement model integrated with Global Malmquist-Luenberger approach (SBM-GML) is applied in GTFP calculation, and then a time-varying difference-in-difference (DID) setup is employed for empirical analysis, as well as its combination with propensity score matching method (PSM-DID) to overcome the sample self-selection bias. We find that EI significantly promotes firm's GTFP by about 0.22 units, which is mainly driven by the improvement of technical efficiency rather than technological progress. Further analysis exploring channels suggests that EI promotes GTFP by alleviating financing constraints and stimulating green innovation. However, the heterogeneity analysis shows that both financing constraint mechanism and technological innovation mechanism are mainly observed in heavily polluting and non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs). Our findings provide a new insight for policy-makers that utilizing environmental insurance can promote green productivity, but which should be focused more on those enterprises who are difficult to absorb external financing and technological innovation resources.

Drivers of unconditional income convergence

We decompose economic growth into technical efficiency change, technological change, and capital accumulation to analyze the drivers of unconditional income convergence across countries observed in recent decades. Our analysis suggests that technical efficiency improvement and capital accumulation are the main drivers of the observed unconditional convergence. Specifically, developing countries experienced faster efficiency improvement than developed countries in the period of unconditional convergence (1995–2019), which was not the case in the preceding period characterized by the lack of income convergence (1970–1995).

Technical standardization and total factor productivity in innovation-driven development: Evidence from China.

Innovation drive differs from investment drive and resource drive in that it focuses on knowledge and skills to promote productivity growth. By integrating technical standards within the framework of an innovation-driven development system in this work, theoretical implications for this development strategy may be revealed. Following our theoretical study, we built a PECM utilizing China's inter-provincial panel data from 2007 to 2020 to investigate the long and short-term relationships between standardization, R&D, and innovation-driven development. The following are the key findings: First, both standardization and R&D are the nation's critical engines of innovation-driven development. Second, standardization has the greatest impact on TFP through improving technical efficiency, whereas R&D drives both technical development and technical efficiency improvement. Third, while the influence of technical standard drafters' production scale on scale efficiency was insignificant from 2007 to 2013, it became substantial after 2014 with China's macroeconomic reform of "transforming the mode and changing the structure."

Drivers of global energy export dependency: A decomposition analysis

Exploring energy export dependency under the carbon neutrality target is crucial for energy security and low-carbon transition. Currently, few studies have examined drivers of energy export dependency; furthermore, most of them failed to capture the impact of technology on energy change and were unable to explain the causal factors of energy intensity decline. This study analyzed the trends and drivers of energy export dependency in 40 major countries from 2000 to 2019 through a decomposition approach, and explained the decline of energy intensity caused by technological progress. The empirical results indicate that energy prices and energy export importance are the key drivers of the increase in energy export dependency in OECD countries, while technological progress can effectively reduce the energy export dependency of non-OECD countries by decreasing energy intensity. In addition, OECD countries pay attention to capital-energy substitution capacity, while non-OECD countries attach importance to the improvement of technical efficiency. These findings provide a scientific reference for energy transition and sustainable development in various countries.

Efficiency and productivity analysis of maternal and infant healthcare services in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The paper examines the efficiency and productivity of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries towards maternal and infant healthcare services between 2015 and 2019. Data envelopment analysis is utilised to evaluate efficiency, and Malmquist-Luenberger's (ML) productivity estimation is employed for productivity analysis. The results indicate inefficiency in SSA maternal and infant healthcare services. Average efficiency is pegged at 85%, and 60% of the countries evaluated had below-average efficiency. Effects of socioeconomic dynamics of countries were analysed. Preliminary estimations on the impact of Gross domestic product (GDP), education, urban population, and total population on efficiency are not significant. Although GDP and education sometimes show that they influence efficiency positively. Sensitivity analysis indicates efficiency to be more responsive to health expenditure, as well as to nurses and midwives. ML Productivity decomposition into technical efficiency change and technological change indicates improvement in technical efficiency as the principal driver of efficiency and productivity. Policy recommendations are made in line with the findings, requirements, and constraints of SSA countries.

The Financial Density and Improvement of Urban Technological Efficiency: An Estimation Based on the Stochastic Frontier Approach

Exploring the relationship between finance and economic growth is a key direction of financial economics. However, most of the literature starts from the aggregate perspective and uses the GDP or per capita GDP as the explained variable to study the role of finance. Such a perspective ignores the heterogeneity of financial activities with respect to geographical distribution and makes it difficult to distinguish the roles of factor input and efficiency improvement. Because of this, this article introduces a “density” perspective on new economic geography and the measurement of the efficiency of the transition of development economics into financial economics. This article uses the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) method to measure the technical efficiency (TE) of 272 cities in China from 2005 to 2018 and then, based on “forward-looking” and “backward-looking” methods, measures the impact of financial density on urban technical efficiency. This study found that overall, before the financial crisis in 2008, the contribution of financial density to technical efficiency showed a downward trend, and in the regional and provincial dimensions, the distribution of financial density’s contribution to technical efficiency was generally in line with that of backward regions, with less regularity in developed regions. In the urban dimension, the contribution rate of financial density to resource-based cities with slow technological progress or advanced cities with rich financial resources is not very prominent and may even play a negative role; however, cities that are at a medium level of development, rich in population resources, have convenient transportation, and have a certain industrial foundation can greatly promote the improvement of technical efficiency. Therefore, it may be possible to optimize the marginal contribution of urban financial density to the technical efficiency of Chinese cities by encouraging the flow of financial resources and activities from cities with small marginal effects to those with large marginal effects.

OVERCOMING THE BARRIERS TO THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES THROUGH THE BUSINESS MODEL SELECTION MECHANISM

The article describes the main barriers to digital transformation faced by industrial enterprises in various industries, such as: lack of appropriate funding, information security risks, insufficient digital skills of employees, insufficient maturity of current processes, internal resistance to change, insufficient awareness of managers, lack of certainty over the future of digital standards. To analyse the barriers, the author used a three-step approach, including a literature review, a primary research with representatives of the companies, and a qualitative comparative analysis that are based on the Kruskal – Wallis test and used to identify differences between groups of enterprises. To overcome the barriers identified by the author it was offered to use a mechanism of a business model selection, which takes into account the assessment of obtained competitive advantages (improvement of operational, financial and technical efficiency), digital maturity (digital culture level, staff qualifications, the quality of business process organisation and access to digital infrastructure) and risks (non-receipt of expected income from business model implementation, information security, reputational and personnel). The novelty of the proposed business model selection mechanism for an industrial enterprise is to improve the classification and develop a multi-criteria mechanism for choosing a business model, which would be implemented using a knowledge-based system incorporating a fuzzy inference mechanism.

Do water-saving policies improve water-use technical efficiency? Evidence from the water-receiving cities of China’s South–North Water Transfer Project

ABSTRACT China has implemented a series of water-saving policies in response to the growing threat of water shortages. However, it remains unclear whether these water-saving policies, which aim to reduce water-use intensity, will actually improve water-use technical efficiency. This study scrutinizes water-use technical efficiency within an extended human-environment framework by using the case of China's South–North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP). An improved estimation method for water-use technical efficiency based on stochastic frontier analysis is adopted to empirically investigate the variations in water-use intensity and technical efficiency in the SNWTP's water-receiving cities. This study argues that there is no definitive link between improvements in water-use technical efficiency and decreases in water-use intensity, and thus water-saving policies oriented toward reducing water-use intensity do not necessarily increase water-use technical efficiency. In addition, achieving the goals of water-saving policies by reducing water use intensity alone remains challenging and requires improving the water-use technical efficiency caused by endogenous technological progress. Finally, setting a unified target to reduce water-use intensity leads to inequitable sharing of water-saving tasks between regions, resulting in conflicts of interest among government bureaucracies.

Analysis on Evaluation and Spatial-Temporal Evolution of Port Cluster Eco-Efficiency: Case Study from the Yangtze River Delta in China

The improvement of port cluster eco-efficiency is of great significance to constructing a world-class shipping hub and the high-quality development of regional economy. This study adopts the Super-EBM (Super-efficiency Epsilon-Based Measure) model to evaluate the eco-efficiency of the Yangtze River Delta port cluster in China, and the GML (Global Malmquist-Luenberger) index, spatial hot spot analysis, gravity center migration model, and the Theil index are combined to reveal the spatial-temporal evolution. The results show that the average eco-efficiency of the Yangtze River Delta port cluster is 0.686, with 55.6% of the ports being below the average, which is directly related to the low scale efficiency. Mainly driven by technical efficiency improvement, the overall eco-efficiency has a growth rate of 8.7% from 2010 to 2019. Moreover, considerable spatial divergence has formed in the port cluster, and the eco-efficiency gravity center has always been in the south of Jiangsu. The overall eco-efficiency gap has widened by 19.92%, and the gap within the region, particularly within Zhejiang, is the major source. To improve the overall eco-efficiency of the port cluster, policymakers should strengthen the technological spillover of ecologically efficient ports in clean production and mechanism reform, while optimizing the resource consolidation system of ports with relatively low eco-efficiency.

Measuring Changes in Chinese Banking Productivity and Profitability

Abstract This paper adopts the Hicks-Moorstein (HM) TFP index and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to explore efficiency and its relation to changes in profitability and productivity in Chinese commercial banks (CBs). We decompose the HM TFP index into changes in technology, pure technical efficiency, scale efficiency, and output mix and then test for distribution differences when comparing the Malmquist and Hicks-Moorstein productivity indices for a given type of data. The study results reveal that the CBs experience primarily an increment of mix-efficiency rather than an improvement in pure technical efficiency (improvement in management practices) and that Chinese CBs pursue technological progress to meet the requirements for financial innovation and internet banking. This paper highlights the importance of analyzing performance from multiple perspectives and provides alternative explanations of improving productivity and profitability based on technical efficiency in general. Our results indicate that including non-performing loans as the input increases the efficiency score, but off-balance sheet items do not have a significant impact. JEL classification numbers: D24, E58, G24. Keywords: Trading Conditions, Hicks-Moorsteen(HM) TFP index, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Productivity, Profitability.

Green credit operation performance evaluation of commercial banks in the context of epidemic and carbon reduction

As the world is paying increasing attention to carbon reduction, this paper uses Chinese commercial banks’ green credit and applies the DEA-Malmquist index method to construct an evaluation index system based on the panel data of the top 10 Chinese banks regarding green credit from 2015 to 2021. The results of the study show that: (1) the overall total factor productivity of the banking industry in mainland China from 2015 to 2021 is greater than 1 and shows a fluctuating upward trend except for 2015, with the mean value greater than 1 indicating a steady increase in the green credit operating efficiency of the banking industry; (2) Further analysis shows that the average value of the technical efficiency change index is greater than the average value of the technological progress index, which can be understood as the important reason for the rising operational performance of green credit business in the banking industry, and technological progress also provides a supporting role for the rising operational performance; (3) the average value of the scale efficiency change index from 2015 to 2021 is less than 1, and from 2017 onwards the value starts to be less than 1 and declining, it can be concluded that scale efficiency hinders the increase of technical efficiency index. (4) The magnitude of change in total factor productivity and the influencing factors of the 10 banks are all related to technical efficiency, indicating that the improvement of technical efficiency is the dominant factor in the improvement of green credit operational efficiency; (5) the pure technical efficiency of all 10 banks keeps increasing while the scale efficiency is decreasing, indicating that pure technical efficiency is the key factor in the improvement of banks’ technical progress index, while scale efficiency inhibits the further improvement of technical progress index. The increase in the technical progress index has been inhibited by scale efficiency.

Tech-Business Analytics – a Review-based New Model to Improve the Performances of Various Industry Sectors

Purpose: Integration of ICCT underlying technologies and big data technology to develop a new kind of Business analytics that can be used to solve semi-structured and unstructured problems of various industry sectors i.e., primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary industry sectors. The new study is known as Tech-business analytics (TBA). The goal of this study is to better understand the idea of TBA and how it influences a company's innovation outcomes. Design/Methodology/Approach: The originality of business analytics products/services in many industries is based on how business analytics is directly influenced by data-driven culture, but product/service importance is influenced indirectly by environmental scanning, which is further influenced by the usage of ICCT underlying technologies. Through a comprehensive review, analysis of the existing state, anticipating ideal/desired status, identifying research gaps, and analysing of research objectives in business analytics, this have developed a new concept of Tech-Business Analytics in this work. The paper also examines the importance of Business Analytics (BA) and how to predict the importance and applications of projected business analytics in future business sectors using the ABCD analytical framework. Findings/Result: This review based a new concept of integrated technology that combines ICCT underlying technologies with big data leads to a new model of tech-business analytics for improving the performance of different industry sectors. With all the resources, templates, technologies, opportunities, and capabilities of integrating Data science with other ICCT underlying technologies, Tech-business analytics will a paradigm shifter with a lot of potentials in solving industrial problems. Originality/Value: The new model of tech-business analytics is developed which is a review-based new concept opportunity for improving Industry Performance in Various Industries. A generic architecture is also developed, which looks at Tech Business Analytics in Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary industry sectors and is useful for research for technical efficiency improvement purposes. Paper Type: Exploratory research.

Study on the Measurement and Influencing Factors of Rural Energy Carbon Emission Efficiency in China: Evidence Using the Provincial Panel Data

This paper summarizes the spatial–temporal characteristics of China’s rural energy carbon emission efficiency and then uses the Tobit model to explore its influencing factors. The results show that the rural energy carbon emission efficiency had experienced a growing trend in China during 2005 and 2020, with an annual growth rate of 4.82%. The growth is more affected by technological changes than by improvements in technical efficiency. Although all 30 provinces were in a state of improvement in rural energy carbon productivity during the period under review, there were significant differences between them. Technological change played a significant important role in promoting rural energy carbon productivity in the majority of Chinese provinces, while technical efficiency not only played a slightly less important role but also deteriorated in many provinces. Rural energy carbon emission efficiency is positively influenced by the level of agricultural development, the structure of rural labor force, and the urbanization level. However, it is negatively affected by the structure of cultivated land use, the rural human capital and rural residents’ consumption level. As such, policy formulation should support and promote the overall improvement of rural energy carbon emission efficiency.

Analysis on Logistics Efficiency Measurement of New Western Land-Sea Corridor under the Background of "Double Carbon" and Ecological Environment Protection.

Under the research background of ecological environment protection and "double carbon" goal, this paper applies panel data on the logistics industry from 2010 to 2019 in 12 provinces of China's new western land-sea corridor to statically measure the logistics industry's technical efficiency after taking into account the impact of different environmental elements and to analyze the dynamics trends of total factor productivity in the logistics sector. It is measured by using the three-stage SBM model and the Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index, which considers undesirable output. The findings indicate the following: (1) In the context of "double carbon," the overall technical efficiency of the logistics sector in the new western land-sea corridor seems to be relatively low; however, the average technical efficiency of the logistics sector in the southern portion of the new western land-sea corridor does seem to be higher than that of the northern part. (2) The logistics industry's technical efficiency varies greatly by region, with locations near central China having much higher technical efficiency than remote inland areas. (3) The fundamental reason for the improvement of technical efficiency in the logistics industry is pure technical efficiency, and the driving force behind the increase in total factor productivity is technological advancement. (4) Economic development, informatization development, industrial market scale, and import and export all have a substantial influence on the logistics industry's technical efficiency. Finally, depending on the findings, policy recommendations are offered.

The dynamic change trends and internal driving factors of green development efficiency: robust evidence from resource-based Yellow River Basin cities.

Promoting the green development of resource-based cities is an essential way to achieve sustainable regional economic development. Based on 2009-2019 panel data of the Yellow River Basin cities, this study adopts the super-directional distance function model to measure the green development efficiency of these selected cities. Furthermore, based on the Malmquist-Luenberger index, this paper focuses on the dynamic change trend of green development efficiency and internal driving factors. Furthermore, the Tobit model is used to specifically explore the influencing factors affecting the green development of cities. The findings suggested that the green development efficiency of selected cities falls in the middle to high range and that the efficiency varies among all cities in the Yellow River Basin. Likewise, technical efficiency improvements and technological progress drive development efficiency, and the former contributes more to green development. However, financial development, energy structure adjustments, and environmental regulation can strongly contribute to the green development of cities, and each influencing factor has obvious temporal and regional differences. This paper proposes appropriate policy suggestions to promote the coordinated development of the economic development and environmental protection of the Yellow River Basin.

The north–south gap and spillover effect of Chinese service industry green development

Taking the Qinling-Huaihe River as the boundary, this paper divides the Chinese service industry into north and south regions. The current study calculates the green total factor productivity of the Chinese service industry from 2003 to 2019 by using the DEA-Malmquist productivity index method. The influencing factors of the service industry in the north and south of China are tested by the Moran index and the spatial Durbin model. The results show that the green total factor productivity of the Chinese service industry shows great regional heterogeneity. The average green total factor productivity of northern China is 1.4 percentage points lower than that of southern China. The leading factor for the growth of green total factor productivity in southern China is technological progress, while TFP in northern China mainly depends on technical efficiency improvement. The results of spatial econometric regression show that the intensive level of producer services plays a significant role in promoting the green development of the service industry. The transportation infrastructure can significantly promote the green development level of the service industry. Finally, some suggestions are provided to narrow the gap between the north and south of the Chinese service industry.

Pipe Diameter Optimization and Two-Phase Flow Pressure Drop in Seabed Pipelines: A Genetic Algorithm Approach

Industries such as oil, gas, and petrochemicals encounter a multifaceted challenge when it comes to the transportation of diverse substances through pipelines. The process relies heavily on two-phase flow, particularly in the case of seabed pipelines responsible for conveying oil and natural gas. In our study, the intricate dynamics of pressure fluctuations in horizontal seabed pipelines were comprehensively investigated through the use of simulation software. Nevertheless, the software employed had its limitations as it failed to account for economic considerations. To address this limitation, the integration of a genetic algorithm was undertaken, which encompassed constraints related to the initial investment, thereby contributing to the enhancement of cost-effectiveness in pressure drop calculations. Additionally, a novel parameter was introduced into the Baker model, leading to improvements in both technical efficiency and economic viability. It was observed that augmenting the weight of the initial investment constraint resulted in a reduction in the optimal pipeline diameter, following a third-degree curve. Furthermore, the research findings indicated that a 4% increase in water shear led to a 14.76% decrease in frictional pressure drop within vertical pipes and a 3.5% reduction in horizontal pipes. Conversely, as the gas-to-oil ratio was increased, frictional pressure drop surged by 116.87% in vertical pipes and 81.69% in horizontal pipes. This valuable information can be harnessed to optimize pipeline design and operations in the demanding underwater environments commonly encountered in these industries.

Comparisons of Ecotourism Efficiency and Spatial-temporal Evolution Based on DEA-Malmquist Model: A Case Study of Jiangsu Province in China

The DEA-Malmquist model was used to measure the ecotourism efficiency of 13 cities in Jiangsu Province from 2010 to 2020, and the spatial and temporal differences were further analysed. The results show that the tourism technical efficiency in Jiangsu Province in China is generally at a high level, and the tourism scale efficiency restricts the improvement of tourism technical efficiency. The unbalanced of the technical progress in tourism between the prefecture-level cities is obvious. Overall, the change of technical progress in tourism has the strongest impact on the total factor productivity index. Therefore, strengthening the inter-regional cooperation of tourism development, training of tourism professionals, improving the structure of tourism industry, optimizing the allocation of tourism production factors, and expanding the scale and agglomeration effect of tourism can improve the efficiency of ecotourism.

Introduction to the special issue on mobility, climate change, and economic inequality

Introduction to the special issue on mobility, climate change, and economic inequality