Green Total Factor Productivity and Its Saving Effect on the Green Factor in China’s Strategic Minerals Industry from 1998–2017

Yujian Jin (), Lihong Yu and Yan Wang
Additional contact information
Yujian Jin: School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China
Lihong Yu: School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China
Yan Wang: School of Business, Linyi University, Linyi 276000, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 22, 1-20

Abstract: Improving green total factor productivity (GTFP) is a fundamental solution to help the strategic mineral industry to achieve green and sustainable development. This study incorporates the dual negative externalities of resource depletion and environmental pollution into the GTFP measurement to capture the ‘green’ elements. By employing a truncated third-order (TTO) translog cost function and the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) approach, we evaluate the GTFP growth performance and its components in China’s strategic minerals industry from 1998 to 2017. Moreover, we explore the bias of technological progress toward the resource and environmental factors to grasp the green factor saving effects. The results show that: (1) during the sample period, the average GTFP growth rate of China’s strategic minerals industry was 0.46%, but there were variances between mineral sectors. Nevertheless, after 2012, the GTFP of all mineral sectors experienced different degrees of decrease. (2) The main driver of adjustments in GTFP growth shifted from technological progress to changes in scale efficiency, with technological progress contributing less to GTFP growth. This is particularly evident in the metal and energy minerals sectors. (3) Green technological progress is biased toward saving environmental factor input but enhancing resource extraction. Therefore, the current development of China’s strategic minerals industry falls into a non-sustainable mode of being environmentally friendly but not resource-saving.

Keywords: strategic mineral; green total factor productivity; scale efficiency change; biased technological progress; truncated third-order function (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/22/14717/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/22/14717/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:22:p:14717-:d:967519

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().