Data for: Sources of production inefficiency and productivity growth in China: A global data envelopment analysis

Abstract of associated article: The current mode of production in China is extensive and inefficient and has caused great stress on both resources and the environment. This paper focuses on analyzing the sources of production inefficiency and productivity growth in China. Here, a developed slacks-based measure is utilized to decompose production inefficiency into three components: input inefficiency, economic output inefficiency, and environmental inefficiency. Furthermore, by applying a method based on global data envelopment analysis, we take a further step to analyze the key factors responsible for the change of environmental productivity during 2003–2011 from the point of view of technical progress, productive scale, and management level. The results show that, redundancy in energy and labor inputs, and excessive emission of sulfur dioxide, chemical oxygen demand, and ammonia nitrogen, are the main sources of production inefficiency in China. During the sample period, the efficiency in all inputs and environmental emissions has improved (except for capital input efficiency, which had a decreasing trend). Further analysis shows that the overall environmental productivity in China has begun to follow an ascending path. Technical progress is the most powerful contributor to China's productivity growth, while the decreases in scale and management efficiency are the two main obstacles preventing productivity improvement.

本文摘要：当前我国的生产模式呈现粗放且低效的特点，对资源和环境造成了巨大的压力。本研究聚焦于剖析我国生产低效及生产率增长的成因。在此，运用一种基于松弛度的先进度量方法，将生产低效分解为三个组成部分：投入低效、经济产出低效和环境低效。此外，通过全球数据包络分析方法，进一步探究了2003年至2011年期间我国环境生产率变化的关键因素，从技术进步、生产规模和管理水平三个维度进行考察。研究结果显示，能源和劳动力投入的冗余以及二氧化硫、化学需氧量和氨氮排放的过度，是我国生产低效的主要来源。在样本期间，所有投入和环境污染排放的效率均有所提升（资本投入效率呈下降趋势）。进一步分析表明，我国整体环境生产率已开始步入上升通道。技术进步是我国生产率增长的最强动力，而规模的缩小和管理效率的降低则是阻碍生产率提升的两个主要障碍。