IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v9y2017i8p1333-d106386.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Impact of Public Education and Regional Economic Growth in China: A Shadow-Price Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Zhiqian Yu

    (School of Economics and Statistics, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China)

  • Ning Zhu

    (School of Economics and Commerce, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China)

  • Tomas Baležentis

    (Lithuanian Institute of Agrarian Economics, Vilnius 03105, Lithuania)

Abstract

Education development is a critical component for a modern economy as the illiteracy rate can hinder economic growth. The illiteracy rate in China has decreased rapidly since 1980s, but there still exists an imbalance in distribution of educational resources among different regions. In order to explore the impacts of education quality on regional economic growth, we employ a quadratic directional distance function to derive the shadow prices of illiteracy for 31 provinces in China. In this case, shadow price is interpreted as the opportunity cost of reducing the illiteracy rate. The results show that the highest shadow price of illiteracy is observed in the middle region. Looking at individual provinces, Zhejiang shows the lowest shadow price of illiteracy, whereas Shanxi features the highest one. The shadow price of illiteracy showed a downward trend in the eastern region, while increasing trends were observed for the middle and the western regions during 2005–2011. Moreover, the gap between the eastern region on the one side and the middle and the western regions on the other side has been increasing.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhiqian Yu & Ning Zhu & Tomas Baležentis, 2017. "Impact of Public Education and Regional Economic Growth in China: A Shadow-Price Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(8), pages 1-10, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:8:p:1333-:d:106386
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/8/1333/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/8/1333/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fare, Rolf & Grosskopf, Shawna & Noh, Dong-Woon & Weber, William, 2005. "Characteristics of a polluting technology: theory and practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 469-492, June.
    2. Russell W. Pittman, 1981. "Issue in Pollution Control: Interplant Cost Differences and Economies of Scale," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(1), pages 1-17.
    3. M. Murty & Surender Kumar & Kishore Dhavala, 2007. "Measuring environmental efficiency of industry: a case study of thermal power generation in India," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 38(1), pages 31-50, September.
    4. Lee, Myunghun & Zhang, Ning, 2012. "Technical efficiency, shadow price of carbon dioxide emissions, and substitutability for energy in the Chinese manufacturing industries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 1492-1497.
    5. Pittman, Russell W, 1983. "Multilateral Productivity Comparisons with Undesirable Outputs," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 93(372), pages 883-891, December.
    6. Chambers, Robert G. & Chung, Yangho & Fare, Rolf, 1996. "Benefit and Distance Functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 407-419, August.
    7. Christopher O’Donnell & D. Rao & George Battese, 2008. "Metafrontier frameworks for the study of firm-level efficiencies and technology ratios," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 231-255, March.
    8. R. G. Chambers & Y. Chung & R. Färe, 1998. "Profit, Directional Distance Functions, and Nerlovian Efficiency," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 98(2), pages 351-364, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sakchai Naknok, 2021. "Effect of Fiscal Policy on Human Capital in Thailand," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(1), pages 136-158.
    2. Liping Liao & Minzhe Du & Bing Wang & Yanni Yu, 2019. "The Impact of Educational Investment on Sustainable Economic Growth in Guangdong, China: A Cointegration and Causality Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-16, February.
    3. Xinxin Wang & Jingjing Hong & Pengpeng Fan & Shidan Xu & Zhixian Chai & Yubo Zhuo, 2021. "Is China’s urban–rural difference in population aging rational? An international comparison with key indicators," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3), pages 1866-1891, September.
    4. Kwang-Jing Yii & Kai-Ying Bee & Wei-Yong Cheam & Yee-Lee Chong & Ching-Mei Lee, 2018. "Is Transportation Infrastructure Important to the One Belt One Road (OBOR) Initiative? Empirical Evidence from the Selected Asian Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-18, November.

    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. Adewale Henry Adenuga & John Davis & George Hutchinson & Trevor Donnellan & Myles Patton, 2019. "Environmental Efficiency and Pollution Costs of Nitrogen Surplus in Dairy Farms: A Parametric Hyperbolic Technology Distance Function Approach," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 74(3), pages 1273-1298, November.
    2. Lee, Sang-choon & Oh, Dong-hyun & Lee, Jeong-dong, 2014. "A new approach to measuring shadow price: Reconciling engineering and economic perspectives," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 66-77.
    3. Du, Limin & Hanley, Aoife & Zhang, Ning, 2016. "Environmental technical efficiency, technology gap and shadow price of coal-fuelled power plants in China: A parametric meta-frontier analysis," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 14-32.
    4. Wei, Xiao & Zhang, Ning, 2020. "The shadow prices of CO2 and SO2 for Chinese Coal-fired Power Plants: A partial frontier approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    5. Yu-Ying Lin, Eugene & Chen, Ping-Yu & Chen, Chi-Chung, 2013. "Measuring green productivity of country: A generlized metafrontier Malmquist productivity index approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 340-353.
    6. Du, Limin & Mao, Jie, 2015. "Estimating the environmental efficiency and marginal CO2 abatement cost of coal-fired power plants in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 347-356.
    7. Zhou, P. & Zhou, X. & Fan, L.W., 2014. "On estimating shadow prices of undesirable outputs with efficiency models: A literature review," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 799-806.
    8. Badau, Flavius & Färe, Rolf & Gopinath, Munisamy, 2016. "Global resilience to climate change: Examining global economic and environmental performance resulting from a global carbon dioxide market," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 46-64.
    9. Du, Limin & Hanley, Aoife & Wei, Chu, 2015. "Estimating the Marginal Abatement Cost Curve of CO2 Emissions in China: Provincial Panel Data Analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 217-229.
    10. Rakesh Kumar Jain & Surender Kumar, 2018. "Shadow price of CO2 emissions in Indian thermal power sector," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 20(4), pages 879-902, October.
    11. Surender Kumar & Rakesh Kumar Jain, 2021. "Cost of CO2 emission mitigation and its decomposition: evidence from coal-fired thermal power sector in India," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 693-717, August.
    12. Dong-Hyun Oh & JongWuk Ahn & Sinwoo Lee & Hyundo Choi, 2021. "Measuring technical inefficiency and CO2 shadow price of Korean fossil-fuel generation companies using deterministic and stochastic approaches," Energy & Environment, , vol. 32(3), pages 403-423, May.
    13. Chunbo Ma and Atakelty Hailu, 2016. "The Marginal Abatement Cost of Carbon Emissions in China," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(China Spe).
    14. Manh D. Pham & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2017. "Convexity, Disposability and Returns to Scale in Production Analysis," CEPA Working Papers Series WP042017, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    15. Kounetas, Konstantinos, 2015. "Heterogeneous technologies, strategic groups and environmental efficiency technology gaps for European countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 277-287.
    16. Wu, Yinyin & Yu, Jie & Song, Malin & Chen, Jiandong & Hou, Wenxuan, 2021. "Shadow prices of industrial air pollutant emissions in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 726-736.
    17. Xiaohong Liu & Jiasen Sun & Feng Yang & Jie Wu, 2020. "How ownership structure affects bank deposits and loan efficiencies: an empirical analysis of Chinese commercial banks," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 290(1), pages 983-1008, July.
    18. Rødseth, Kenneth Løvold, 2013. "Capturing the least costly way of reducing pollution: A shadow price approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 16-24.
    19. Zhao, Yu & Zhong, Honglin & Kong, Fanbin & Zhang, Ning, 2023. "Can China achieve carbon neutrality without power shortage? A substitutability perspective," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    20. Atkinson, Scott E. & Dorfman, Jeffrey H., 2005. "Bayesian measurement of productivity and efficiency in the presence of undesirable outputs: crediting electric utilities for reducing air pollution," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 445-468, June.

    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:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:8:p:1333-:d:106386. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.