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

Jayanath Ananda and Benjamin Hampf

Ecological Economics, 2015, vol. 116, issue C, 211-219

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.

Keywords: Malmquist–Luenberger index; Urban water utilities; Greenhouse gas emissions; Nonparametric productivity measurement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800915002104
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:116:y:2015:i:c:p:211-219

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.04.025

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().