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The impact of economic activity on the environment is a matter of growing concern for firm managers, policymakers, researchers and society as a whole. Building on previous work by Kortelainen (2008) [Dynamic environmental performance analysis: A Malmquist index approach. Ecological Economics 64, 701–715], we contribute an approach to assessing inte...

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... our opinion, these features could yield worthwhile infor- mation to policymakers, helping them to design better environmental policies; e.g., if policy- makers are aware of scarce environmental performance progress regarding a particular pollu- tant due to slow environmental technical change, policy measures particularly aimed at pro- moting green technologies and eco-innovations in the management of this pollutant would probably be put in practice. Figure 1 illustrates this assertion. ...
Context 2
... potential is meas- ured by the segment FE and comes from the difference between the directional distance func- tions of observation k 1 projected onto the eco-efficient frontiers of periods 1 and 0, respective- ly. However, with a direction that only reduces pollutant p1, always maintaining value added and p2, the potential saving due to the environmental technical change occurred between pe- riods 0 and 1 is measured by DC. Figure 1 also shows the potential saving in pollutants p1 and p2 due to the change in environmental technology in a scenario where directional distance functions are computed assuming proportional reductions in both pollutants; in this case, BA would represent environmental technical change. Noticeably, the contribution of environmen- tal technical change to the change in environmental performance could be quite different de- pending on the scenario considered, i.e., the direction vector. ...

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... The latter is transformed according to Seiford and Zhu, (2002) in order to find out how to upgrade the performance of inefficient countries or decision making units (DMUs) in terms of DEA. As highlighted by Matsumoto et al., (2020), the integration of air pollutants into the model is essential for a thorough assessment of environmental performance. The DEA method has already been used for the same purpose (see Ancev et al., 2017), as well as the Seiford and Zhu's transformation (e.g., Lu & Lu, 2018) and MPI (Borozan, 2021). ...
... The beginning of the twenty-first century is particularly challenging and its features such as economic turbulence, complexity and heterogeneity have to be addressed by politicians and academics. Several studies provided evidence that environmentally adjusted efficiency and productivity is sensitive to the economic situation (Beltran-Estere & Picazo-Tadeo, 2017;Matsumoto et al., 2020) as well as that there is considerable heterogeneity between EU countries in terms of the quality of environmental performance (Beltran-Estere & Picazo-Tadeo, 2017;Garcia-Alvarez & Moreno, 2018;Cámara-Aceituno et al., 2024) and the level of development, particularly between the advanced (EU-17) and the new, post-transition (EU-11) MSs (UNECE, 2011;Matsumoto et al., 2020;Pueretas et al., 2022). Despite differences in the definition of environmental performance and the methods used to evaluate it, many studies have revealed a modest increase in environmental efficiency and/or productivity in the EU over the last several decades (Mahlberg et al., 2011;Beltran-Esteve & Picazo-Tadeo, 2017;Garcia-Alvarez & Moreno, 2018;Matsumoto et al., 2020), with technological advancements being highlighted as the main reason for these improvements. ...
... The beginning of the twenty-first century is particularly challenging and its features such as economic turbulence, complexity and heterogeneity have to be addressed by politicians and academics. Several studies provided evidence that environmentally adjusted efficiency and productivity is sensitive to the economic situation (Beltran-Estere & Picazo-Tadeo, 2017;Matsumoto et al., 2020) as well as that there is considerable heterogeneity between EU countries in terms of the quality of environmental performance (Beltran-Estere & Picazo-Tadeo, 2017;Garcia-Alvarez & Moreno, 2018;Cámara-Aceituno et al., 2024) and the level of development, particularly between the advanced (EU-17) and the new, post-transition (EU-11) MSs (UNECE, 2011;Matsumoto et al., 2020;Pueretas et al., 2022). Despite differences in the definition of environmental performance and the methods used to evaluate it, many studies have revealed a modest increase in environmental efficiency and/or productivity in the EU over the last several decades (Mahlberg et al., 2011;Beltran-Esteve & Picazo-Tadeo, 2017;Garcia-Alvarez & Moreno, 2018;Matsumoto et al., 2020), with technological advancements being highlighted as the main reason for these improvements. ...
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... According to their predictions, only Slovakia, Latvia, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Bulgaria, and Lithuania will exceed the primary energy savings targets in 2020. European Environment Agency (2012) and Picazo-Tadeo et al. (2014) in relation to greenhouse gas emissions predicted that in 2020 emissions in most EU member states will be below their national targets. The results of the regression analysis Liobikienė, G. and Butkus, M. (2017) showed that economic growth and increasing primary energy consumption will contribute to the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, which may negatively affect the achievement of the targets. ...
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... Creative economy firms, such as those in the arts, design, and media sectors, often rely on intangible assets and knowledge-based production processes rather than heavy resource consumption (Picazo-Tadeo, et al, 2014). Similarly, they are innovation intensive and tend to embrace advanced technologies that prioritize sustainability (Auerswald, 2021). ...
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... This empirical literature can be roughly classified into three groups depending on how environmental performances are taken into account: 1 i) entering environmental bads/goods as additional inputs outputs and then adopting conventional methods of productivity measurement such as index number (or growth accounting) approaches, Data Envelopment Analysis or stochastic functions estimation (Färe et al., 1989;Reinhard et al., 2000); ii) the frontier eco-efficiency models, that derive eco-efficiency measures within the production frontier framework as the ratio between the economic output value and an indicator of the environmental pressures generated by the production processes (Picazo-Tadeo et al., 2014); iii) the nutrients balance-based models, that rely on the so-called materials balance principle establishing that the total amount of materials must equalize in either desirable or undesirable inputs and outputs (Kuosmanen and Kuosmanen, 2013). ...
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... In addition to labor and capital stock in the EU-14, Mahlberg et al. (2011) considered GHG emissions as input. Based on the input-oriented DEA model and the Malmquist productivity index, they found out that eco-efficiency increased due to improved environmental conditions in the period 1960-2004. Picazo-Tadeo et al. (2014 and Beltran-Esteve and Picazo-Tadeo (2017) evaluated environmental efficiency in the EU-28 over the period 1990-2011. They utilized different aggregate pollutants as inputs. An application of DEA, based on the directional distance function and the Luenberger productivity index, led them to the conclusion that improved environmental effi ...
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... Eco-performance growth was mainly due to high average rates of technical progress with respect to emissions, except for crop farms. The fact that technical change is the main driver of eco-productivity has previously been shown in the literature (Kortelainen 2008;Picazo-Tadeo, Castillo-Giménez, and Beltrán-Esteve 2014;Beltrán-Esteve and Picazo-Tadeo 2017). Emission-efficiency is shown to be the highest (1.09%) for crop farms. ...
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... Surprisingly, there is quite limited evidence on efficiency and productivity growth in the EU, even when only desirable output is addressed [10,11]. This is particularly true when studies of productivity changes with desirable and undesirable output come into question [12][13][14][15]. However, neglecting undesirable output and energy as a factor of production in efficiency and productivity analyses may lead to misleading results and policy implications. ...
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Global competition and climate change are changing the nature of economic activity and impose the urgent need to have environmentally sensitive productivity growth. The paper addresses both desirable and undesirable output to assess technical efficiency and productivity changes, as well as evaluate the importance of an energy input in the production function and productivity change differentials in the European Union (EU) over the period 2000–2018. To that end, it uses output-oriented data envelopment analysis and Malmquist productivity analysis. The results reveal that the EU is facing significant challenges due to a decreasing trend in technical efficiency and slow productivity growth. The absence of major improvements in human resource performance has reduced the benefits of technological innovations which are the main source of productivity growth. Additionally, the results show that energy use did not critically influence efficiency and productivity.