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Abstract
This study computes the environmental efficiency of 31 Asia-Pacific countries and regions for the year 2007, using the super slacks-based measurement data envelopment analysis approach. Efficiency measure allows us to identify the reduction potential for carbon emissions. The author subsequently examined an environmental Kuznets curve type relationship between environmental efficiency and gross domestic product per capita. The empirical results show that a U-shaped relationship exists for the constant returns to scale model and the turning-point income is $US3,824. However, for the variable returns to scale model, the author does not find a Kuznets- type relationship.
Notes
1. 1. Song, An, Zhang, Wang, and Wu (Citation2012) provided a recent survey of environmental efficiency assessments based on DEA.
2. 2. Färe, Grosskopf, and Margaritis (Citation2001) estimated the total factor productivity (TFP) of 17 APEC economies and decompose efficiency and technical changes for the period 1970–1990. Their analysis does not include environmental variables. Their results show that Singapore experienced a high TFP growth rate, whereas among major APEC countries, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand exhibited negative TFP growth rates on average.
3. 3. Super efficiency of which score is allowed to be larger than unity is first proposed by Andersen and Petersen (Citation1993).
4. 4. The author examined models that added the cubic term of GDP per capita and control variables. Their results are omitted because they are insignificant.