Research on the efficiency of the mining industry in China from the perspective of time and space

Jiabin Chen, Shaobo Wen and Yuchen Liu

Resources Policy, 2022, vol. 75, issue C

Abstract: China's mining industry must satisfy the domestic demand and shoulder the responsibility of maintaining the integrity of the international industrial chain. However, its sustainable development is tightly restricted by limited resources and the environment. To enhance the competitiveness of China's mining industry and its ability to withstand risk, measures should be taken to improve the production efficiency. This paper studies the temporal and spatial variation in the efficiency of China's mining industry and the spatial correlation in regional efficiency. We innovatively adopt a super-SBM (slack-based measure) model with undesirable outputs and the Malmquist index to calculate the efficiency in 31 provinces between 2007 and 2016; then, we apply Moran's index to investigate the spatial autocorrelation in the efficiency of the mining industry. The results show that China's mining industry is efficient and shows a trend of technological retrogression. The common factor that characterizes provinces with large fluctuations in efficiency is excessive undesirable output (discharge of pollutants). Globally, there is no spatial correlation in regional efficiency. From a local perspective, Shanxi, Hubei, Sichuan, and Guizhou present an L-H cluster that forms a regional mining center, Chongqing. For policy, the results imply that cross-regional cooperation and the exchange of technology and management should be strengthened so that high-efficiency provinces can drive improvements among low-efficiency provinces. In the meantime, reducing pollutant discharge and developing technological innovation in line with green mining are common methods for preventing efficiency degradation.

Keywords: Super-SBM; Malmquist index; Moran's index; Technological retrogression; Undesirable output; Technological innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jrpoli:v:75:y:2022:i:c:s0301420721004839

DOI: 10.1016/j.resourpol.2021.102475

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