환경경제효율성 실증분석을 통한 국가별 비교 연구

Abstract

Growing demands for environmental quality force the policy-makers to consider the environmental impacts of their choices in the formulation of economic policies. The objective of this study is to evaluate each countries’s sustainability, by using the multi-country comparative analysis based on the Eco-Efficiency Index(EEI). Product efficiency or improvement of productivity considering an environmental factor is one of the important indicators that measures the national competitive power. These new indicators can provide critical information to the government in the implementation of industrial and regulation policies. This study estimates an efficiency and an output loss including environmental regulation, and analyzes the environmental efficiency index empirically, then forecasts each countries’s sustainability level through multi-country comparative analysis. Environmental efficiency indices can be constructed by comparing the production processes under alternative assumptions of disposability, by using a hyperbolic measure of productive efficiency. A hyperbolic measure of productive efficiency is a method that can increase production and at the same time, decrease pollutants simultaneously. This measure regards a product unit that achieved more output and less pollutants at the same time as the high efficiency level. It is a measure of productive efficiency that anticipates a simultaneous success of the growth and environment and corresponds to the concept of sustainable development. To estimate eco-efficiency level of each countries including an environmental regulation, the technology efficiency of production was divided into two classes - Strong disposability and Weak disposability. Strong disposability means that a producer can produce a product only by considering the cost about output without additional cost which is caused by a regulation and restriction. On the other hand, weak disposability means that a producer consider an additional pollutant treatment cost with the production cost. This analysis of efficiency shows how the environmental factor or the change of output affects productivity. To develop an environmental efficiency index, we used cross-section data on all countries to solve the linear programming problems for each countries. The solutions determine the efficiency for each country for a given year, with respect to two OECD multi-output production frontiers constructed under alternative disposability assumptions for the undesirable output. The ratio of the two efficiency scores gives an index of the environmental efficiency for a given year. This computation is repeated for each year between 1985 and 1999 in order to analyze the development of environmental efficiency over time. As a result of estimation for the environmental efficiency index, EEI of OECD countries gradually shows a downward trend. In the Model which includes all kinds of pollutants, the analysis of the efficiency scores indicates that the efficiency in the latter half of the 1990’s is lower than the efficiency in the latter half of the 1980’s. In terms of the treatment of pollutants, Japan, Germany and France are countries that have a considerable burden in getting rid of the pollutants. In particular, Japan is a country which would assume the largest share due to this transformation. In case of Korea for estimation of EEI, the result shows that Korea displayed excellent environmental efficiency, but in the latter half of the 1990’s(Ⅲ period), the environmental efficiency of Korea became slightly worse. During the same period, Korea had a burden in dealing with NOx just like the other OECD countries. The results of this study reveal that as far as the environmental regulations or the pollutant treatment costs are concerned, environmental efficiency in Korea is not so bad compared with the other countries. However, there are some points to be improved about environmental efficiency. Therefore, the manufacturing industry or the pollution industry need to transform into environmentally friendly production process, and be concerned about the treatment of NOx particularly. For the sustainable and environmentally friendly economic growth, under the basis of this study, the level of pollutant emission was refrained strongly. And it is necessary to study the case of countries that shows the high environmental efficiency in same condition as compared with our country.