Tomas Balezentis

Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences

This paper discusses the interlinkages between energy security indicators and government economic interventions in the electricity sector. The research was carried out using a systematic literature review and comparative analysis and was mainly based on qualitative criteria. Following a literature review and data analysis, the paper identifies 65 e...

Purpose The study seeks to shed light on the estimates of the carbon shadow price in the literature relying on frontier techniques. The shadow price of undesirable outputs, such as greenhouse gas emissions, assists policymakers in determining the most cost-effective methods for reducing emissions. Design/methodology/approach The study relies on th...

This paper seeks to draw a research agenda for unveiling the underlying bottlenecks and possibilities for improving the agricultural total factor productivity in the European Union (EU). To this aim, the paper first surveys the key challenges for the modern agricultural economy. Then, the case of the EU is discussed by looking at the convergence in...

Since the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine War, global food markets have been in turmoil. Agricultural input and energy prices doubled between 2020 and 2022, with immediate consequences on food accessibility. We examine the drivers of the EU food inflation patterns, and how trade integration shapes these dynamics. We find that food price in...

Increasing climate volatility has called for further analysis of the risk management measures in agriculture. This paper sheds more light on production risks in the crop farming of northeastern European agriculture. Specifically, the cases of the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) are juxtaposed to those of Poland and Germany. Thu...

Circular supply chains (CSCs) prioritize resource efficiency by reusing, remanufacturing, and recycling materials, offering environmental benefits and competitive advantages. However, they are facing various risks and organizational challenges that hinder their efficiency. To ensure long‐term sustainability, this study identifies the key risks and...

Using search engine data (SED) to forecast tourist flow is essential for management and security warnings at tourist attractions. Existing prediction models cannot effectively handle noise in the SED and external uncertainties. Thus, insufficient feature extraction may hinder the fitting of tourist flow time series. To improve the prediction accura...

The European Union (EU) is addressing global climate change issues in the formulation of energy policy for many years. Each EU member state plays a pivotal role in realising ambitious goals and implementing measures for energy policy and climate change mitigation. This study introduces a composite indicator, serving as a metric to assess the progre...

The increased number of middle-aged and older adults leads to depression in this stratum of the population as a topical social and public health issue. However, the new generation of information technologies has exerted a profound impact on the lives of middle-aged and older adults, and offers potential solutions for alleviating their depression. T...

Low-carbon transition is a shift from an economy that depends heavily on fossil fuels to a sustainable, low-carbon energy economy. This book analyzes the role of renewables in driving the low-carbon transition in agriculture, explores the circular bio-based economy, and examines policies and strategies designed to facilitate low-carbon transition i...

This study delves into the influence of traffic-related pollution on respiratory diseases within the United States. While prior research has established a connection between air pollution and mortality or morbidity in sensitive age groups, this association has been predominantly observed in highly polluted areas, particularly in California. In this...

To examine the intricate relationship between digitalization development and sustainable development, this study commences its analysis by employing the entropy method to establish an integrated indicator of digitalization development among advanced nations. Subsequently, we utilize a panel dataset spanning a decade from 2010 to 2020, encompassing...

The concept of energy security is recognized as a complex and highly context-dependent phenomenon, necessitating the development of diverse indicators for its measurement. While numerous studies examined composite energy security indicators and frameworks from various angles, including inconsistencies, measurement challenges, and methodological lim...

Climate change poses an urgent threat, necessitating the implementation of measures to actively reduce carbon emissions. The development of effective carbon emission reduction policies requires accurate estimation of the costs involved. In situations where actual prices of commodities are not available in the market, shadow pricing provides a usefu...

Responding to disruptive events is important to maintain supply chain viability. It is of the utmost importance to maintain functioning of agrifood supply chains as they provide essential goods for maintaining the population. However, there is a diverse pool of possible strategies to ensure the viability of agribusiness and agrifood supply chains....

When compared to traditional indicators, text information can capture market sentiment, investor confidence, and public opinion more effectively. Meanwhile, the mixed-frequency dynamic factor model (MF-DFM) can capture current changes. In this study, the authors constructed a financial cycle measurement and nowcasting framework by incorporating tex...

Although shadow banking widely exists in the financial systems of various countries, their definitions vary significantly due to specific economic and financial characteristics. This paper classifies Chinese shadow banking into six categories: securities, trust, private lending, banking, fund, and insurance. The AR-GARCH-DCC model is used to measur...

The production of high-quality seeds and planting material is the basis for increasing the efficiency and sustainability of crop production. The main aim of this article is to develop proposals to ensure that supply meets the demand in the seed and planting material market Ukraine. The future prospects are also discussed. The paper uses statistical...

Improving green productivity (GP) is critical for achieving global sustainable green development. Yet, past efficiency studies on the African continent have ignored Africa's GP, estimation, and driving factors. Specifically, the role of sovereign debt vulnerability, environmental entrepreneurship, and institutional quality in ensuring Africa's gree...

Evaluation of green development is crucial for policy analysis and decision‐making. To address the research gap on green development assessment systems, this study first presents the Super‐efficiency Bounded Adjusted Measure model to gage the green growth index and economic growth index. This analysis involves evaluation of the coupling coordinatio...

Transition towards low‐carbon and carbon‐neutral society requires multiple technological solutions. Thermal power generation is the main source of power generation in China and contributes to a large portion of carbon emission. Under the goal of “carbon peak”, thermal power generation efficiency will become an important factor affecting industrial...

Through their consumption behavior, households are responsible for more than 70% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, the GHG emission reduction potential due to the household behavior is very high. Energy consumption is the main source of the GHG emission in households. There are two main ways to reduce GHG emissions in households:...

Efficiency generally translates to better financial performance and profitability and, thus, is often taken into account when analyzing activity of the banking sector. The sustainability approach adds social and environmental effects to the economic ones. Even though there have been studies on the different facets of the sustainable banking and its...

The development of the sustainable energy systems is crucial for economic growth and climate change mitiga-tion. This paper proposes a nonparametric approach based on the by-production technology comprising the economic and environmental sub-technologies. We consider both renewable and fossil energy in the analysis. This approach allows identifying...

Disruptive events may be critical to supply chains as they may not be viable enough to sustain the challenges. Public support is often offered in order to increase the viability of supply chains. This is particularly important in the context of agri-food supply chains that are crucial for food security. This article proposes a novel framework for t...

The measurement of economic growth is important for identifying the development patterns followed by different economies. In the light of sustainable development goals, one needs to be able to track the green growth, i.e., they must the adjusted in regard to generation of undesirable outputs that are usually non-marketed. This contribution puts for...

Most of empirical studies assume convex production technology to analyze productivity growth at the aggregate level. However, convexity assumption implies benchmarking against production plans that are not empirically observed. Unlike previous studies, we adopt a non-convex approach based on observed input–output combinations, which requires minima...

The European Green Deal and similar strategies seek to improve sustainability of the agricultural sector via public support programmes. It is important to assess the costs of sustainable energy use in agriculture by exploiting the shadow price approach. However, the earlier literature often ignored the fact that shadow price analysis may be sensiti...

Energy transition is a crucial issue for sustainable development in the energy sector. It is also the main instrument to meet climate change goals. The development of energy technologies and economic instruments has created new interactive forms for prosumers involvement. The paper systematically analyzes new business models for energy prosumption...

The agricultural production plays an important role in food provision and income generation for the rural population. To mitigate the climate change and ensure food security, the agricultural sector has faced multiple initiatives, including the European Green Deal. Developing effective frameworks for measures under such initiatives requires identif...

Firms can purchase innovation results to improve their technology. In this context, the key to transfer success is reasonably priced innovation results. Considering the match between innovation results and firm technology, this study analyzes the nonlinear improvement effect of innovation results on technology. The pricing decision is then assessed...

Increasing population and economic growth in Europe and the world are leading to growing demand for food, livestock feed, and energy, and consequently to growing negative impacts on the environment and climate change. Tensions and price fluctuations in international material supply chains have recently become an even greater challenge. As for bioma...

This study examines agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) from theoretical and empirical perspectives. Specifically, the measures, relevant data, and major sources of the TFP growth are discussed. Using the sector-level growth and productivity data from the EU KLEMS, EUROSTAT, FAOSTAT, and USDA databases, the TFP growth in the EU countries o...

Achieving carbon neutrality is crucial for the global economy to ensure sustainable development. Quantitative approaches are needed to track the emissions and determinants thereof. The Generalized Divisia Index (GDI) has received wide attention to quantify major factors driving CO 2 emissions. However, there has been no research on the application...

The interconnected global trading system has proved to be both vulnerable and resistant to crises, despite its asymmetries. The global trading system is constantly changing under the influence of such factors as the digitalization of economic processes and the growing number of nontariff measures to regulate trade volumes, including trade protectio...

Food loss and waste is relevant for all stages of a food supply chain. Methodological and empirical solutions are needed to properly quantify these losses. The present paper embarks on the quantification of food loss in the Lithuanian food processing sector. This issue has not received substantial coverage in the literature yet, even though the tra...

E-commerce provides opportunities to extend the market and plays a vital role in modern economy. However, its implementation often requires high-level technical infrastructure. This study regards both e-commerce and R&D as input factors and analyses their impact on firm output in the manufacturing sector of China. We find that e-commerce capital st...

With the increasing affluence, the differences in CO2 emission between urban and rural residential sectors are remarkable and show an increasing trend. In case of China, residential sector accounts for a substantial share of the national CO2 emission, bringing greater pressure to achieve the goal of carbon peak. Analyzing the emission inequality tr...

Strategic emerging industries facilitate the deep integration of emerging technologies and strategic industries. Exploring the factors of the innovation efficiency of strategic emerging industries are of great significance to effectively implement the strategy of innovation-driven development and enhance national core competitiveness. In order to i...

Private charging pile sharing is an innovative business model alleviating the shortage of well-developed publicly accessible charging infrastructure, which has been evident in large cities. However, the lack of effective benefit distribution scheme impedes the implementation and promotion of private charging pile sharing projects. To address this d...

This paper focuses on the state-of-the-art analysis of the concepts relevant to the functioning of agricultural supply chains. The viable supply chains concept is considered to be the most comprehensive one that encompasses sustainability, agility and resilience. However, this concept has scarcely been applied to agricultural supply chains. Thus, w...

Energy policy affects the functioning of the economic and financial systems of countries worldwide. This paper provides a theoretical overview of the economy-energy nexus and discusses the particular cases of the energy policy dynamics amid the sustainability goals. This paper integrates multiple perspectives on the energy-economy nexus, with a par...

Research on economic resilience in agriculture is quite complicated due to the interdisciplinary nature of the notion. In agricultural, climate change, sustainability and food security research it appears as an endogenous phenomenon rather as the main one. This study aims to contribute to conceptualization of economic resilience in agriculture, rev...

This publication is an external report for the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission's science and knowledge service. It aims to provide evidence-based scientific support to the European policymaking process. The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the position or opinion of the European Commission. Neither the E...

This paper explores the issue of food waste in the Lithuanian retail sector. A questionnaire survey was designed in order to collect the relevant data from both the largest retail chains with stores around the country and companies with small-scale stores in rural areas. The present case is interesting as the literature on Central and Eastern Europ...

The sustainability-related decision-making oftentimes involves uncertain information. One of the key solutions in representing the interval information is the use of the interval information (numbers). This paper proposes a multi-criteria decision-making approach that relies on the algebra of random variables in handling the interval information. T...

Urban and regional development is indispensable from energy systems that function in a sustainable and resilient manner. The generation of renewable energy has seen significant upturn in the last decade. Renewables can be exploited to meet the global energy needs and climate change mitigation goals. Therefore, development of urban and regional ener...

This study aims to investigate the relationship between sustainability and resilience concepts in agriculture. First, we discuss the theoretical preliminaries related to the definition of these two concepts. Indeed, the literature considers sustainability as a proxy for resilience and vice versa in the context of agriculture. Intuitively, one may e...

Sustainable development of marine economy requires strengthening the marine environmental monitoring and management. Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) realises multi-dimensional monitoring of marine environment by measuring the traits of seawater. To further promote real-time online marine monitoring, conducting a robust assessment of CTD equipm...

This paper analyses the trends and sources of change in agricultural revenue for the new European Union (EU) member states, namely Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. These countries still lag behind the old EU member states in terms of profitability, productivity, and farm size. Thus, assessment of the patterns in agricultural revenue changes in these...

This paper presents a framework for decomposition of changes in farm profitability with regards to structural, activity and intensity (efficiency) effects. The Index Decomposition Analysis (IDA) is adapted for isolation of the effects of profit margin, asset turnover, leverage, capital intensity and structure. The proposed approach complements the...

Financial agglomeration (FA) may play an essential role in enhancing energy efficiency (EE) and, thus, is important from both theoretical and empirical viewpoints. However, few studies have investigated the causal nonlinear relationship between FA and EE. Hence, we first extend the novel ray slacks-based measure with global technology to evaluate t...

Educational equity significantly supports the creation of a harmonious society, which has become one of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations for 2030. Chi-na's education level has greatly improved as nine-year compulsory education popularized and enrollment expanded in higher education. However, educational inequality remains a s...

Currently, national bodies and international congregations, such as that of the Stock‐ holm, Rio, and Johannesburg conferences, jointly identified that sustainable energy devel‐ opment has proven to be a very challenging factor in global development. Indicative sus‐ tainability challenges facing humanity include greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and...

The conventional convexity assumptions frequently placed on piecewise linear frontiers of production technologies modeled using data envelopment analysis imply non-increasing marginal products. Assuming geometric convexity in the context of the exponential technology represents a more general alternative that imposes no underlying restrictions on t...

This paper applies the Bennet total factor productivity (TFP) indicator and the economic surplus methodology to identify the stakeholders who generate or consume the gains from the productivity growth. The case of Lithuania is considered. The period covered is 2001–2020. The annual TFP growth of 2.3% is observed. The results confirm price advantage...

The European transition to green economy is based on long-term strategies. The Europe 2020 Strategy was launched in 2010 in order to promote smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth in the region. Later, the ambitions regarding this strategy were followed by the Green Deal and Sustainable Development Goals. Now, the effort of countries towards the...

We discuss an environmental Luenberger–Hicks–Moorsteen (LHM) total factor productivity (TFP) indicator and its decomposition that incorporates a negative externality into the measurement of economic performance. Special cases of a generalized environmental directional distance function are involved in the definition of this LHM indicator and its pr...