The Analysis of Undesirable Output to Countries’ Productivity: The Example of the Asian Countries

Abstract

This article selects 35 Asian countries during the period 2001 to 2005 and uses Seiford and Zhu’s (2002) data envelopment analysis to calculate and analyze those 35 countries’ productivity efficiency based on fossil-fuel carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, studying the effects of the undesirable output to productivity efficiency ranking. The input variables are the population and the amount of government investment. The output variances are gross domestic product and the amount of fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions during the period 2001 to 2005. The undesirable output is fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions.

The result shows that most of the middle Asian countries have the best efficiency productivity ranking in 2001 to 2005. The number of the best efficiency countries does not imply a big difference, but the countries’ ranking variance is obviously diverse. Small countries have the best productivity efficiency, while advanced countries can offer the best productivity without CO₂ emissions.

Keywords:

• CO₂ emission
• countries’ productivity
• DEA
• efficiency undesirable output