IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v116y2015icp211-219.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring environmentally sensitive productivity growth: An application to the urban water sector

Author

Listed:
  • Ananda, Jayanath
  • Hampf, Benjamin

Abstract

The energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in the provision of urban water and sewerage services have become an increasingly important issue in recent times. However, the impact of negative externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions on the productivity of urban water provision has received less attention in the literature. This paper applies the global Malmquist–Luenberger (GML) productivity index, which accounts for undesirable outputs in order to evaluate the productivity trends in the Australian urban water sector. Results indicate that the inclusion of greenhouse gas emissions significantly influences the productivity measurement. Findings also indicate that the conventional index, which disregards undesirable outputs, over-states the productivity growth. Despite a declining trend in greenhouse emissions over the period, the overall productivity trend of the urban water sector experienced a downward trend while accounting for bad output. This productivity decline occurs in a period of prolonged drought, water security concerns and increased reliance on desalinization and water recycling.

Suggested Citation

  • Ananda, Jayanath & Hampf, Benjamin, 2015. "Measuring environmentally sensitive productivity growth: An application to the urban water sector," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 211-219.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:116:y:2015:i:c:p:211-219
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.04.025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800915002104
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.04.025?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yoruk, BarIs K. & Zaim, Osman, 2005. "Productivity growth in OECD countries: A comparison with Malmquist indices," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 401-420, June.
    2. Rolf Färe & Shawna Grosskopf & Dimitri Margaritis & William Weber, 2012. "Technological change and timing reductions in greenhouse gas emissions," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 205-216, June.
    3. Byrnes, Joel & Crase, Lin & Dollery, Brian & Villano, Renato, 2010. "The relative economic efficiency of urban water utilities in regional New South Wales and Victoria," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 439-455, August.
    4. Pastor, Jesus T. & Lovell, C.A. Knox, 2005. "A global Malmquist productivity index," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 266-271, August.
    5. Dong-hyun Oh, 2010. "A global Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 183-197, December.
    6. Abbott, Malcolm & Cohen, Bruce & Wang, Wei Chun, 2012. "The performance of the urban water and wastewater sectors in Australia," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 52-63.
    7. Rolf Färe & Shawna Grosskopf & Carl A Pasurka, Jr., 2001. "Accounting for Air Pollution Emissions in Measures of State Manufacturing Productivity Growth," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(3), pages 381-409, August.
    8. David Saal & David Parker & Tom Weyman-Jones, 2007. "Determining the contribution of technical change, efficiency change and scale change to productivity growth in the privatized English and Welsh water and sewerage industry: 1985–2000," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 127-139, October.
    9. Kristof De Witte & Rui Marques, 2010. "Designing performance incentives, an international benchmark study in the water sector," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 18(2), pages 189-220, June.
    10. Abbott, Malcolm & Cohen, Bruce, 2009. "Productivity and efficiency in the water industry," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(3-4), pages 233-244, September.
    11. Zhou, P. & Ang, B.W. & Han, J.Y., 2010. "Total factor carbon emission performance: A Malmquist index analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 194-201, January.
    12. Simar, Leopold & Wilson, Paul W., 1999. "Estimating and bootstrapping Malmquist indices," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 459-471, June.
    13. Jayanath Ananda, 2014. "Institutional Reforms to Enhance Urban Water Infrastructure with Climate Change Uncertainty," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 33(2), pages 123-136, June.
    14. Zhou, P. & Sun, Z.R. & Zhou, D.Q., 2014. "Optimal path for controlling CO2 emissions in China: A perspective of efficiency analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 99-110.
    15. Zhang, Chunhong & Liu, Haiying & Bressers, Hans Th.A. & Buchanan, Karen S., 2011. "Productivity growth and environmental regulations - accounting for undesirable outputs: Analysis of China's thirty provincial regions using the Malmquist–Luenberger index," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(12), pages 2369-2379.
    16. Oh, Dong-hyun, 2010. "A metafrontier approach for measuring an environmentally sensitive productivity growth index," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 146-157, January.
    17. Rolf Färe & Shawna Grosskopf, 2003. "Nonparametric Productivity Analysis with Undesirable Outputs: Comment," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 85(4), pages 1070-1074.
    18. Caves, Douglas W & Christensen, Laurits R & Diewert, W Erwin, 1982. "The Economic Theory of Index Numbers and the Measurement of Input, Output, and Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1393-1414, November.
    19. Li, Qi & Maasoumi, Esfandiar & Racine, Jeffrey S., 2009. "A nonparametric test for equality of distributions with mixed categorical and continuous data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 186-200, February.
    20. Fare, Rolf, et al, 1989. "Multilateral Productivity Comparisons When Some Outputs Are Undesirable: A Nonparametric Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(1), pages 90-98, February.
    21. Nicholas Pawsey & Lin Crase, 2013. "The Mystique of Water Pricing and Accounting," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(3), pages 328-339, September.
    22. Tim Coelli & Denis Lawrence (ed.), 2006. "Performance Measurement and Regulation of Network Utilities," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3801.
    23. Byung M. Jeon & Robin C. Sickles, 2004. "The role of environmental factors in growth accounting," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(5), pages 567-591.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jayanath Ananda & Nicholas Pawsey, 2019. "Benchmarking service quality in the urban water industry," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 55-72, February.
    2. Lena, Daniela & Pasurka, Carl A. & Cucculelli, Marco, 2022. "Environmental regulation and green productivity growth: Evidence from Italian manufacturing industries," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    3. Deshan Li & Rongwei Wu, 2018. "A Dynamic Analysis of Green Productivity Growth for Cities in Xinjiang," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-13, February.
    4. Yongjun Li & Wenhui Hou & Weiwei Zhu & Feng Li & Liang Liang, 2021. "Provincial carbon emission performance analysis in China based on a Malmquist data envelopment analysis approach with fixed-sum undesirable outputs," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 304(1), pages 233-261, September.
    5. Manello, Alessandro, 2017. "Productivity growth, environmental regulation and win–win opportunities: The case of chemical industry in Italy and Germany," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(2), pages 733-743.
    6. Sinwoo Lee & Dong-Woon Noh & Dong-hyun Oh, 2018. "Characterizing the Difference between Indirect and Direct CO 2 Emissions: Evidence from Korean Manufacturing Industries, 2004–2010," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-16, August.
    7. Emrouznejad, Ali & Yang, Guo-liang, 2016. "CO2 emissions reduction of Chinese light manufacturing industries: A novel RAM-based global Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 397-410.
    8. Ke Wang & Yujiao Xian & Yi-Ming Wei & Zhimin Huang, 2016. "Sources of carbon productivity change: A decomposition and disaggregation analysis based on global Luenberger productivity indicator and endogenous directional distance function," CEEP-BIT Working Papers 91, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEP), Beijing Institute of Technology.
    9. Juan Du & Yongrui Duan & Jinghua Xu, 2019. "The infeasible problem of Malmquist–Luenberger index and its application on China’s environmental total factor productivity," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 278(1), pages 235-253, July.
    10. Hampf, Benjamin & Krüger, Jens J., 2013. "Optimal Directions for Directional Distance Functions: An Exploration of Potential Reductions of Greenhouse Gases," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79699, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Juan Aparicio & Javier Barbero & Magdalena Kapelko & Jesus T. Pastor & Jose L. Zofio, 2016. "Environmental Productivity Change in World Air Emissions: A new Malmquist-Luenberger Index Approach," JRC Research Reports JRC104083, Joint Research Centre.
    12. Dong-hyun Oh, 2010. "A global Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 183-197, December.
    13. Leleu, Hervé, 2013. "Shadow pricing of undesirable outputs in nonparametric analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 231(2), pages 474-480.
    14. Du, Juan & Chen, Yao & Huang, Ying, 2018. "A Modified Malmquist-Luenberger Productivity Index: Assessing Environmental Productivity Performance in China," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 269(1), pages 171-187.
    15. Yongrok Choi & Dong-hyun Oh & Ning Zhang, 2015. "Environmentally sensitive productivity growth and its decompositions in China: a metafrontier Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 1017-1043, November.
    16. Valentin Zelenyuk, 2023. "Productivity analysis: roots, foundations, trends and perspectives," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 229-247, December.
    17. Xia, Fan & Xu, Jintao, 2020. "Green total factor productivity: A re-examination of quality of growth for provinces in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    18. Sueyoshi, Toshiyuki & Yuan, Yan & Goto, Mika, 2017. "A literature study for DEA applied to energy and environment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 104-124.
    19. Zhang, Ning & Choi, Yongrok, 2013. "Total-factor carbon emission performance of fossil fuel power plants in China: A metafrontier non-radial Malmquist index analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 549-559.
    20. Arocena, Pablo & Saal, David S. & Urakami, Takuya & Zschille, Michael, 2020. "Measuring and decomposing productivity change in the presence of mergers," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 282(1), pages 319-333.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:116:y:2015:i:c:p:211-219. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.