Industrial SO2 technical efficiency, reduction potential and technology heterogeneities of China's prefecture-level cities: A multi-hierarchy meta-frontier parametric approach

Jun Yang, Jixin Cheng, Ran Zou and Zhifei Geng

Energy Economics, 2021, vol. 104, issue C

Abstract: Excessive emission of industrial SO2 has seriously restricted the sustainable development in China. Therefore, in this paper, considering the heterogeneities of resources endowments, and regional development levels, a multi-hierarchy meta-frontier parametric approach was proposed to evaluate the industrial SO2 technical efficiency (STE) of China's cities from the year of 2003 to 2016, which was further divided into structural, technical and management efficiency. Moreover, the statistical noises in linear programming parameters were taken into account by following the bootstrap approach. Furthermore, the “resource curse” and “regional development imbalance” in China were discussed, and the industrial SO2 reduction potential was estimated according to the sources of inefficiency. The conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) The STE values in most of the cities of China have greatly improved and the cities with efficiency improved more than twice were mainly located in central and western China. Meanwhile, the average STE in the mainland China showed an upward trend, from 0.43 in 2003 to 0.81 in 2016. (2) The average STE and structural efficiency in non-resource cities were greater than those of resource-based cities, which reflected significant production technology heterogeneity between both types of cities. (3) Irrespective of both types of cities, the industrial production technology showed distinct spatial gradient characteristics. Meanwhile, due to the relatively high management efficiency, the industrial input of resources in eastern cities could be more rationally allocated. (4) By optimizing industrial structure, narrowing the technical gaps, and promoting market-oriented reforms and strengthening environmental regulations, China's industry SO2 emissions could have been reduced by about 1800 kt. And the specific SO2 emissions reduction strategies and pathways for the non-resource and resource-based cities were proposed according to the causes of inefficiency.

Keywords: Chinese industry; SO2 technical efficiency; Meta-frontier parametric approach; Direction distance function; SO2 reduction strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988321004904
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:eneeco:v:104:y:2021:i:c:s0140988321004904

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105626

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

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