Urban Water Resource Utilization Efficiency in China

The efficient use of water resources directly affects environmental, social, and economic development; therefore, it has a significant impact on urban populations. A slacks-based measure for data envelopment analysis （SBM-DEA） has been widely used in energy efficiency and environmental efficiency analyses in recent years. Based on this model, data from 316 cities were examined and a category method was employed involving three different sorting techniques to empirically evaluate the efficiency of urban water re- source utilization in China between 2000 and 2012. The overall efficiency （OE） of urban water resource utilization in China was initially low, but has improved over the past decade. The scale efficiency （SE） was higher than the pure technological efficiency （PTE）; PTE is a major determining factor of OE, and has had an increasingly significant effect. The efficiency of water resource utilization varied ac- cording to the region, urban scale, and economic function. The OE score for the eastern China was higher than for the rest of the region, and the OE score for the western China was higher than for the central China. The OE score for urban water resource utilization has improved with urban expansion, except in the case of small cities. The SE showed an inverted U-shaped＇ trend with increasing urban expansion. The OE of urban water utilization in comprehensive functional cities was greater than in economic specialization cities, and was greater in heavy industry specialization cities than in other specialization cities. This study contributes to the field of urban water resource management by examining variations in efficiency with urban ~ezle

Energy Efficiency and Emissions Reduction Potential of China's Industrial Sector

Based on the total-factor energy efficiency framework,this paper calculates China's industrial energy efficiency and CO2 emissions reduction potential from 2000 to 2009 by utilizing the directional distance function and data envelopment analysis.The empirical results show that:China's industrial overall energy efficiency is relatively lower while the emis-sions reduction potential is relatively greater,given the optimum production frontier.Significant indus-trial disparities of energy efficiency and emissions reduction potential exist.Energy efficiency and emis-sions reduction potential significantly show different tendencies of industrial dynamic variation.This paper suggests the Chinese government impose differential carbon taxes,flexibly utilize carbon market mecha-nism,strengthen energy-saving technological R&D,promote the utilization of renewable energy,and strengthen environmental supervision and regulation,so as to improve China's industrial energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions.

Investigating Overall Technical Efficiency in China Commercial Banks： a DEA Approach

Based on the non-Archimedian infinite model C^2R of the Data Envelopment Analysis, combined with characteristics of Chinese mainland banks＇ inputs and outputs, the paper sets up an index system of inputs and outputs as well as an overall technical efficiency evaluation model for Chinese banks, which considers not only the profit ability, but also the control capacity of banks risk. The overall technical efficiency values of Chinese banks are given respectively based on the samples of state owned banks and 14 integrated samples both state owned banks and shareholding banks. The input redundancy of labor, net value fixed assets, operating expenses, owner＇s equity, branch number and output deficiency of operating income, total increase in deposits, total increase in loans, ROE, decrease in bad debts ratio, are also calculated. The pertinence policy suggestions of efficiency improvement of banks are put forward. The results show that the efficiencies of new shareholding banks are far higher than non-shareholding bank and the all four state owned banks are commonly lower in overall technical efficiency. The overall technical efficiency of Agriculture Bank of China is the lowest one in all banks, and Bank of Communications is the efficiency lowest in all shareholding banks. The contributions and characteristics of the paper are： 1） the bad debit ratio is used to reflect the quality of the outputs, which is an improvement to the current literature of neglecting the difference in loans quality. 2） The inefficiency reasons of banks are list out by quantity analysis, and the pertinent macro strategies and concrete measures on improving banks efficiency are given, which is another improvement to current research that tend to give the efficiency value, but not ignore giving improving strategy from quantities analysis. 3） Banks overall technical efficiency values under several portfolios of inputs and outputs are given respectively, which not only overcomes the restraints that the sample size is at least the 2 times of the number of inputs and outputs indexes, but also measures banks overall technical efficiency from several directions. 4） It makes the efficiency values estimation more comparable by extracting four state owned banks for another efficiency evaluation. Combining both state owned banks and shareholding banks as a whole group of efficiency evaluation shows the real overall technical efficiency distance between two different kinds of bank and provide realistic basis for the bank reform of China.