IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v50y2018i4p335-353.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring and forecasting regional environmental and economic efficiency in Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Oliviero A. Carboni
  • Paolo Russu

Abstract

Environmental and economic efficiency has being receiving growing attention among researchers. In general terms, this concept is related to the capability of the economic systems to employ natural resources efficiently, so as to increase economic and human wealth. This clearly implies that both the economic and ecological aspects of decisions ought to be considered. Bearing this in mind, this article considers economic and ecological performance together, by applying data envelopment analysis and the Malmquist productivity index to investigate the efficiency of the 20 Italian regions from 2004 to 2011. The results reveal that the northern regions have been more efficient than the southern ones, highlighting the strong geographical differences between the two. Furthermore, this article uses the grey system theory to forecast regional, economic and environmental efficiency. The results of the forecasting analysis show that the north–south duality remains strong and will possibly increase since the regions in the south get worse in term of environmental and economic efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Oliviero A. Carboni & Paolo Russu, 2018. "Measuring and forecasting regional environmental and economic efficiency in Italy," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(4), pages 335-353, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:50:y:2018:i:4:p:335-353
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2017.1313954
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2017.1313954
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2017.1313954?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. repec:bla:econom:v:58:y:1991:i:232:p:515-29 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Hashimoto, Akihiro & Ishikawa, Hitoshi, 1993. "Using DEA to evaluate the state of society as measured by multiple social indicators," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 257-268, December.
    3. Alicia H. Munnell, 1991. "Is there a shortfall in public capital investment? An overview," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue May, pages 23-35.
    4. Picazo-Tadeo, Andrés J. & Beltrán-Esteve, Mercedes & Gómez-Limón, José A., 2012. "Assessing eco-efficiency with directional distance functions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 220(3), pages 798-809.
    5. Mika Kortelainen & Timo Kuosmanen, 2007. "Eco-efficiency analysis of consumer durables using absolute shadow prices," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 57-69, October.
    6. Noelia Somarriba & Bernardo Pena, 2009. "Synthetic Indicators of Quality of Life in Europe," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 94(1), pages 115-133, October.
    7. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    8. Alicia H. Munnell, 1990. "How does public infrastructure affect regional economic performance?," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 34, pages 69-112.
    9. Sara Proença & Elias Soukiazis, 2008. "Tourism as an Economic Growth Factor: A Case Study for Southern European Countries," Tourism Economics, , vol. 14(4), pages 791-806, December.
    10. Tiago Neves Sequeira & Paulo Macas Nunes, 2008. "Does tourism influence economic growth? A dynamic panel data approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(18), pages 2431-2441.
    11. Meeusen, Wim & van den Broeck, Julien, 1977. "Efficiency Estimation from Cobb-Douglas Production Functions with Composed Error," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 18(2), pages 435-444, June.
    12. Raffaele Paci & Francesco Pigliaru, 1999. "Growth and sectoral dynamics in the Italian regions," Chapters, in: John Adams & Francesco Pigliaru (ed.), Economic Growth and Change, chapter 12, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Timo Kuosmanen, 2005. "Weak Disposability in Nonparametric Production Analysis with Undesirable Outputs," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(4), pages 1077-1082.
    14. Oliviero A. Carboni, 2013. "Investment in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT): The Role of Geographic Distance and Industry Proximity," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 43(2,3), pages 191-212, Winter.
    15. Jacint Balaguer & Manuel Cantavella-Jorda, 2002. "Tourism as a long-run economic growth factor: the Spanish case," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(7), pages 877-884.
    16. Jati Sengupta, 2002. "Economics of efficiency measurement by the DEA approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(9), pages 1133-1139.
    17. Zofio, Jose L. & Prieto, Angel M., 2001. "Environmental efficiency and regulatory standards: the case of CO2 emissions from OECD industries," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 63-83, January.
    18. Aschauer, David Alan, 1989. "Is public expenditure productive?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 177-200, March.
    19. 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.
    20. Valentin Zelenyuk & Vitaliy Zheka, 2006. "Corporate Governance and Firm’s Efficiency: The Case of a Transitional Country, Ukraine," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 143-157, April.
    21. Roberto Cellini & Gianpiero Torrisi, 2014. "Regional Resilience in Italy: A Very Long-Run Analysis," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(11), pages 1779-1796, November.
    22. Cazals, Catherine & Florens, Jean-Pierre & Simar, Leopold, 2002. "Nonparametric frontier estimation: a robust approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 1-25, January.
    23. Rajiv D. Banker & Richard C. Morey, 1986. "Efficiency Analysis for Exogenously Fixed Inputs and Outputs," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 34(4), pages 513-521, August.
    24. Costantini, Valeria & Monni, Salvatore, 2008. "Environment, human development and economic growth," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 867-880, February.
    25. Li, Der-Chiang & Chang, Che-Jung & Chen, Chien-Chih & Chen, Wen-Chih, 2012. "Forecasting short-term electricity consumption using the adaptive grey-based approach—An Asian case," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 767-773.
    26. Cullinane Kevin & Song Dong-Wook & Ji Ping & Wang Teng-Fei, 2004. "An Application of DEA Windows Analysis to Container Port Production Efficiency," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(2), pages 1-23, June.
    27. Orla A. Murphy & Ping Wang & Sunny X. Wang & Greg Tkacz, 2013. "An economic efficiency study on different regions of Ghana via Slack-based data envelopment analysis and regression analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(34), pages 4773-4780, December.
    28. Panayotou T., 1993. "Empirical tests and policy analysis of environmental degradation at different stages of economic development," ILO Working Papers 992927783402676, International Labour Organization.
    29. Fare, R. & Grosskopf, S. & Pasurka, C., 1986. "Effects on relative efficiency in electric power generation due to environmental controls," Resources and Energy, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 167-184, June.
    30. Wade D. Cook & Joe Zhu, 2007. "Data Irregularities And Structural Complexities In Dea," Springer Books, in: Joe Zhu & Wade D. Cook (ed.), Modeling Data Irregularities and Structural Complexities in Data Envelopment Analysis, chapter 0, pages 1-11, Springer.
    31. Maria Balaguer-Coll & Diego Prior & Emili Tortosa-Ausina, 2013. "Output complexity, environmental conditions, and the efficiency of municipalities," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 303-324, June.
    32. Oliviero Carboni & Paolo Russu, 2015. "Assessing Regional Wellbeing in Italy: An Application of Malmquist–DEA and Self-organizing Map Neural Clustering," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 677-700, July.
    33. Volkan Recai Cetin & Serdal Bahce, 2016. "Measuring the efficiency of health systems of OECD countries by data envelopment analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(37), pages 3497-3507, August.
    34. Zhang, Bing & Bi, Jun & Fan, Ziying & Yuan, Zengwei & Ge, Junjie, 2008. "Eco-efficiency analysis of industrial system in China: A data envelopment analysis approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1-2), pages 306-316, December.
    35. Wursthorn, Sibylle & Poganietz, Witold-Roger & Schebek, Liselotte, 2011. "Economic-environmental monitoring indicators for European countries: A disaggregated sector-based approach for monitoring eco-efficiency," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 487-496, January.
    36. Gianluca Esposito & Mr. Sergi Lanau & Sebastiaan Pompe, 2014. "Judicial System Reform in Italy - A Key to Growth," IMF Working Papers 2014/032, International Monetary Fund.
    37. Vittorio Daniele & Paolo Malanima, 2007. "Il prodotto delle regioni e il divario Nord-Sud in Italia (1861-2004)," Rivista di Politica Economica, SIPI Spa, vol. 97(2), pages 267-316, March-Apr.
    38. Despotis, D.K., 2005. "Measuring human development via data envelopment analysis: the case of Asia and the Pacific," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 385-390, October.
    39. Zhou, P. & Ang, B.W. & Poh, K.L., 2006. "A trigonometric grey prediction approach to forecasting electricity demand," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 31(14), pages 2839-2847.
    40. Sergio Destefanis & Vania Sena, 2005. "Public capital and total factor productivity: New evidence from the Italian regions, 1970-98," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(5), pages 603-617.
    41. Bleischwitz, Raimund, 2003. "Cognitive and institutional perspectives of eco-efficiency," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 453-467, October.
    42. Zhou, P. & Ang, B.W. & Poh, K.L., 2008. "A survey of data envelopment analysis in energy and environmental studies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 1-18, August.
    43. Chang, Tsung-Sheng & Ku, Cheng-Yuan & Fu, Hsin-Pin, 2013. "Grey theory analysis of online population and online game industry revenue in Taiwan," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 175-185.
    44. Seiford, Lawrence M. & Zhu, Joe, 2002. "Modeling undesirable factors in efficiency evaluation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 16-20, October.
    45. Daouia, Abdelaati & Simar, Leopold, 2007. "Nonparametric efficiency analysis: A multivariate conditional quantile approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 375-400, October.
    46. Dimitris Balios & Nikolaos Eriotis & Alexandra Fragoudaki & Dimitrios Giokas, 2015. "Economic efficiency of Greek retail SMEs in a period of high fluctuations in economic activity: a DEA approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(33), pages 3577-3593, July.
    47. Aigner, Dennis & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Peter, 1977. "Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 21-37, July.
    48. Simona Bigerna & Paolo Polinori, 2014. "Quality of Life and Efficiency in Italian Municipalities," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 20(3), pages 347-348, August.
    49. Mariano, Enzo Barberio & Sobreiro, Vinicius Amorim & Rebelatto, Daisy Aparecida do Nascimento, 2015. "Human development and data envelopment analysis: A structured literature review," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 33-49.
    50. Scheel, Holger, 2001. "Undesirable outputs in efficiency valuations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(2), pages 400-410, July.
    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. Tsaples, G. & Papathanasiou, J., 2021. "Data envelopment analysis and the concept of sustainability: A review and analysis of the literature," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    2. Simona Ferraro & Tommaso Agasisti & Francesco Porcelli & Mara Soncin, 2021. "Local governments’ efficiency and educational results: empirical evidence from Italian primary schools," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(35), pages 4017-4039, July.
    3. Qi Wang & Qunli Tang & Yingting Guo, 2024. "Spatial Interaction Spillover Effect of Tourism Eco-Efficiency and Economic Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(18), pages 1-19, September.
    4. Vaninsky, Alexander, 2018. "Energy-environmental efficiency and optimal restructuring of the global economy," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 338-348.
    5. Matheus Koengkan & José Alberto Fuinhas & Emad Kazemzadeh & Fariba Osmani & Nooshin Karimi Alavijeh, 2022. "Measuring the economic efficiency performance in Latin American and Caribbean countries: An empirical evidence from stochastic production frontier and data envelopment analysis," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 169, pages 43-54.
    6. Sonja Di Blasio & Louena Shtrepi & Giuseppina Emma Puglisi & Arianna Astolfi, 2019. "A Cross-Sectional Survey on the Impact of Irrelevant Speech Noise on Annoyance, Mental Health and Well-being, Performance and Occupants’ Behavior in Shared and Open-Plan Offices," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(2), pages 1-17, January.

    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. OA Carboni & P. Russu, 2014. "Measuring Environmental and Economic Efficiency in Italy: an Application of the Malmquist-DEA and Grey Forecasting Model," Working Paper CRENoS 201401, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    2. Dakpo, Hervé K & Jeanneaux, Philippe & Latruffe, Laure, 2014. "Inclusion of undesirable outputs in production technology modeling: The case of greenhouse gas emissions in French meat sheep farming," Working Papers 207806, Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2).
    3. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2013. "An additive two-stage DEA approach creating sustainability efficiency indexes," MPRA Paper 44231, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Oliviero Carboni & Paolo Russu, 2015. "Assessing Regional Wellbeing in Italy: An Application of Malmquist–DEA and Self-organizing Map Neural Clustering," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 677-700, July.
    5. Halkos, George E. & Tzeremes, Nickolaos G., 2013. "A conditional directional distance function approach for measuring regional environmental efficiency: Evidence from UK regions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 227(1), pages 182-189.
    6. Cordero, José Manuel & Alonso-Morán, Edurne & Nuño-Solinis, Roberto & Orueta, Juan F. & Arce, Regina Sauto, 2015. "Efficiency assessment of primary care providers: A conditional nonparametric approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(1), pages 235-244.
    7. Zhou, Haibo & Yang, Yi & Chen, Yao & Zhu, Joe, 2018. "Data envelopment analysis application in sustainability: The origins, development and future directions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 264(1), pages 1-16.
    8. Cordero Ferrera, Jose Manuel & Alonso Morán, Edurne & Nuño Solís, Roberto & Orueta, Juan F. & Souto Arce, Regina, 2013. "Efficiency assessment of primary care providers: A conditional nonparametric approach," MPRA Paper 51926, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Zhou, P. & Ang, B.W. & Poh, K.L., 2008. "A survey of data envelopment analysis in energy and environmental studies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 1-18, August.
    10. Cherchye, Laurens & Rock, Bram De & Walheer, Barnabé, 2015. "Multi-output efficiency with good and bad outputs," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(3), pages 872-881.
    11. Léopold Simar & Paul W. Wilson, 2015. "Statistical Approaches for Non-parametric Frontier Models: A Guided Tour," International Statistical Review, International Statistical Institute, vol. 83(1), pages 77-110, April.
    12. Fusco, Elisa & Vidoli, Francesco & Rogge, Nicky, 2020. "Spatial directional robust Benefit of the Doubt approach in presence of undesirable output: An application to Italian waste sector," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    13. Halkos, George & Petrou, Kleoniki Natalia, 2019. "Treating undesirable outputs in DEA: A critical review," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 97-104.
    14. 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.
    15. Barnabé Walheer, 2020. "Output, input, and undesirable output interconnections in data envelopment analysis: convexity and returns-to-scale," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 284(1), pages 447-467, January.
    16. Heesche, Emil & Asmild, Mette, 2022. "Incorporating quality in economic regulatory benchmarking," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    17. Li, Mingquan & Wang, Qi, 2014. "International environmental efficiency differences and their determinants," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 411-420.
    18. Tsolas, Ioannis E., 2011. "Performance assessment of mining operations using nonparametric production analysis: A bootstrapping approach in DEA," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 159-167, June.
    19. José Solana‐Ibáñez & Manuel Caravaca‐Garratón, 2021. "Stakeholder engagement and corporate social reputation: The influence of exogenous factors on efficiency performance (stakeholder engagement and exogenous factors): Stakeholder engagement and exogenou," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(6), pages 1891-1905, November.
    20. George Halkos & Nickolaos Tzeremes, 2014. "Measuring the effect of Kyoto protocol agreement on countries’ environmental efficiency in CO 2 emissions: an application of conditional full frontiers," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 367-382, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:applec:v:50:y:2018:i:4:p:335-353. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    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.