To investigate the effects of post-1980 financial liberalization policies on the economic efficiency of Turkish commercial banks at the micro level, a nonparametric frontier methodology is applied. The distinguishing feature of this model is its capability in addressing simultaneously the developments in economic efficiency and returns to scale in a consistent fashion. The results show that financial reform seems to have succeeded in stimulating the commercial banks not only to take measures that would enhance technical and allocative efficiency, but also to go through necessary scale adjustments in order to achieve optimal scale.

In decomposing the total emissions into scale and pollution intensity, the conventional approach uses the total output as a measure of scale, and hence ignores the fact that pollution is mainly a byproduct of the manufacturing activity. This study recognizing that air pollution is mainly a byproduct of manufacturing activity proposes a new definition of pollution intensitypollution per unit of manufacturing output-, and a new technique to measure the aggregate pollution intensity. The index used is a variant of Malmquist quantity index and satisfies well-established axiomatic properties. One other focal point of this study is the overtime comparisons of pollution intensities, i.e., change in pollution intensity, using indexes that are firmly established in productivity growth literature. D

The role of the environment is an important issue in the policy-making and hence, the accurate assessment of the environmental conditions is vital. In this paper, an environmental efficiency index is developed for the OECD countries using non-parametric techniques. The approach adopted is based on the assumption that there is just one production process behind the production of both goods and pollution emissions. The index derived in this work measures the extent of the required output sacrifice, due to the transformation of the production process, from one where all outputs are strongly disposable to the one which is characterized by weak disposability of pollutants. Using this index, we first conduct cross-section comparisons on the state of each country's production process in its treatment of pollution emissions. We then trace each country's modification of their production processes overtime. The results indicate that if the disposability for CO2 emissions were strictly restricted as the result of an environmental regulation, the total value of output loss to the OECD countries as a whole would correspond to 3.7, 4.8 and 3.5% of the total OECD GDP for 1980, 1985 and 1990, respectively. © 2000 Academic Press

The paper constructs environmental efficiency indexes for a sample consisting of high-and low-income countries using nonparametric production frontier techniques and then establishes an environmental Kuznets relationship for environmental efficiency by Nadaraya-Watson kernel estimation methodology.

We utilize two alternative indices to measure productivity growth for all but two OECD countries. First, we employ a Malmquist productivity index without considering the existence of hazardous by-products of production processes. To address the shortfalls of this index, we construct an alternative Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index and find that the Malmquist index underestimates the productivity growth. Finally, we investigate the effects of an international protocol on reducing global emissions and country-specific effects on Malmquist-Luenberger productivity measures. © 2005 Association for Comparative Economic Studies. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved