Estimation of energy productivity change in Baltic Sea and EU non-Baltic Sea states

ABSTRACT

The Baltic Sea states and the European Commission initiated the intergovernmental Baltic Sea Energy Cooperation (BASREC) in 1998 and established it the following year. The aim of this study is to examine and compare the energy productivity change, energy technical change, and energy efficiency change in Baltic Sea states and non-Baltic Sea states using the Malmquist-DEA approach. The main results indicate that energy productivity in the Baltic Sea states has been improved, with this mainly caused by energy technology progression; however, the improvement in energy efficiency is not so obvious. In addition, the subsample includes 10 former communist countries, showing that the source of their energy productivity change not only comes from energy technical change, but also energy efficiency changes. In other words, the catching up effect in the 10 former communist countries is more obvious than that in the Baltic Sea states.

KEYWORDS:

• Baltic Sea states
• Malmquist-DEA approach
• BASREC
• EU

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C52
• Q43

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ming-Chung Chang is Professor at the Department of Marketing, Kainan University, Taiwan. His research work focuses on enterprise risk management, productivity & efficiency, environmental & resource economics, and international technology licensing. His research studies have been published in some international journals, including Economic Modelling, Energy Policy, Applied Economics, International Journal of Information Technology and Decision Making, Polish Journal of Environmental Studies, Energy, Baltic Journal of Economics, Sustainability, Journal of Cleaner Production, etc.

Ching-Hua Yu is assistant professor at the Department of Marketing, Kainan University, Taiwan. Her research work focuses on microstructure, behaviour finance, and financial economics. Her research studies has been published in some journals, such as The Institute for Business and Finance Research, Journal of Data Analysis, Review of Securities and Futures Markets, International Research Journal of Finance and Economics, Journal of Financial Studies, etc.