Performance and risk in the Brazilian banking industry.

This paper assesses the technical performance of Brazilian banks while accounting for risk, which is considered as an undesirable outcome of banking. To this end, frontier techniques based on Data Envelopment Analysis and directional distance functions are applied to a sample of 124 banks and data for the six-year period 2014-19. Our main finding is that the Brazilian banking industry could notably increase its production of conventional outputs without additional input usage and while maintaining the same levels of risk. Besides, investment banks are found to be more efficient than commercial banks mainly because of their superior managerial performance.

Performance in the treatment of municipal waste: Are European Union member states so different?

Efficient management and treatment of municipal waste is essential for achieving green growth. Recent studies have revealed convergence in European Union (EU) member states' performance in municipal waste treatment, particularly since the transposition of the 2008 European Waste Framework Directive into national laws. However, there are still notable differences between countries. In this paper, we calculate a composite indicator of performance in municipal waste treatment at the country-level. We also present an in-depth examination of differences in performance across EU member states. Our results show that the best performers-mainly high income Northern and Central European countries-treat larger quantities of waste per capita, mostly through recycling and composting and digestion. At the opposite end of the ranking, the worst performers-mostly poorer Eastern European countries-treat smaller amounts of waste per capita, largely through landfilling. Our main conclusion is that further policy measures aimed at reducing cross-country differences in waste treatment performance are needed in the EU.

Environmental productivity in the European Union: A global Luenberger-metafrontier approach.

This paper studies environmental productivity in the European Union-28 (EU-28) by extending the methodology proposed by Oh (2010) to an additive Luenberger-metafrontier framework. The main advantage of this approach is that it allows the analyst to account for cross-country heterogeneity. Using data on GDP, environmental pressures and inputs, the change in environmental productivity and its determinants between the years 2001 and 2016 is assessed in several scenarios; heterogeneity is accounted for by differentiating between the members of the former European Union-15 (EU-15) and the new members that joined the EU-28 from the 2000s onwards. Our results show an improvement in environmental productivity over the period, fuelled by both local and global innovation effects, with some EU-15 members advancing the global environmental technology. Conversely, efficiency change has almost always been negative, pointing to a worrying failure to catch up to the best environmental technologies. Accordingly, policy measures aimed at boosting the use of green technologies are urgently needed in the EU-28.

Performance and convergence in municipal waste treatment in the European Union.

This paper assesses performance and convergence in the treatment of municipal waste by the members of the European Union-27 (EU-27) during the period 1995-2016. First, a composite indicator of performance -including landfill, incineration, recycling, and composting and digestion as treatment operations- is computed with Data Envelopment Analysis and Multi-Criteria-Decision-Making techniques at country and year levels. Then, convergence is assessed using the techniques proposed by Phillips and Sul (2007, 2009) and, more recently, by Kong et al. (2017). The best performers are Central and Northern European countries such as Denmark, Austria and Germany, whereas the worst are some Eastern European countries that joined the European Union in the 2000s. Furthermore, performance has largely converged among EU-27 countries since the enactment of the current Waste Framework Directive in 2008.

Assessing farming eco-efficiency: a Data Envelopment Analysis approach.

This paper assesses farming eco-efficiency using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) techniques. Eco-efficiency scores at both farm and environmental pressure-specific levels are computed for a sample of Spanish farmers operating in the rain-fed agricultural system of Campos County. The determinants of eco-efficiency are then studied using truncated regression and bootstrapping techniques. We contribute to previous literature in this field of research by including information on slacks in the assessment of the potential environmental pressure reductions in a DEA framework. Our results reveal that farmers are quite eco-inefficient, with very few differences emerging among specific environmental pressures. Moreover, eco-inefficiency is closely related to technical inefficiencies in the management of inputs. Regarding the determinants of eco-efficiency, farmers benefiting from agri-environmental programs as well as those with university education are found to be more eco-efficient. Concerning the policy implications of these results, public expenditure in agricultural extension and farmer training could be of some help to promote integration between farming and the environment. Furthermore, Common Agricultural Policy agri-environmental programs are an effective policy to improve eco-efficiency, although some doubts arise regarding their cost-benefit balance.

Environmental externalities and efficiency measurement.

Production of desirable outputs often produces by-products that have harmful effects on the environment. This paper investigates technologies where the biggest good output producer is not the greatest polluter, i.e. technologies located on the downward-sloping segment of the frontier depicted in Färe et al. (1989). Directional distance functions and Data Envelopment Analysis techniques are used to define an algorithm that allows them to be identified empirically. Furthermore, we show that in such situations producers can contribute social goods, i.e. reducing polluting wastes, without limiting their capacity to maximise production of marketable output. Finally, we illustrate our methodology with an empirical application to a sample of Spanish ceramic tile producers.